Farmville | FarmVille Almanac

30 original ways to lock your FarmVille avatar Part I

FarmVilleDate 121 (Monday, October 19, 2009) 13 comments

A well known trick to speed up farming in FarmVille is locking your avatar so that he or she doesn't walk to all the places you click on. Traditionally normal hay bales are used.

Some users prepare a section on their field where they can lock the avatar (so that it does not disturb the crops field), other place it in the middle of the playing field so that the avatar gets locked immediately.

Here are some original ways to lock your avatar I found:

1. Sergio (level 36) puts him on a Tower	2. Ian (level 38) gives him a graveyard	3. Jesus (level 36) gives him the flags (as well as many others)
4. Ian (level 37) gives him enough light	5. Revathy (level 36) puts him between swans	6. Saron (level 36) between pink hay Bales
7. Sebastian (level 36) puts him between chickens	8. Mohammed (level 36) locks him between a fence	9. Romualdo (level 35) puts him between ducks
10. Petter (level 35) put him between hay Bales and a fence	11. Tia (level 35) between white hay bales	12. Diane (level 35) uses some Halloween decoration
13. Andy (level 35) has some great use for the strawberry mastery sign	14. Stephen (level 36) uses traditional hay bales but there is something scary nearby	15. Well.. Kyle (level 36) uses the gray ones.
16. On Emmanuel's (level 34) farm another hay avatar joined in	17. Harry (level 34) locks him between a flag	18. Henry (level 34) between sheep
19. Michael (level 33) between message signs	20. Sekar (level 33) has a neat topiary building for him	21. Ricardo (level 33) uses different colors of hay bales
22. Dan (level 33): flags only	23. Debbie (level 33) uses a graveyard also (no wonder, see #2)	24. Stnzi (level 33) has a nice place for him
25. At Okurio (level 33) I'm actually IN the haunted house	26. Ins (level 33) : Topiary only	27. Derya (level 33) uses a soft touch
28 Michelle (level 33) gives him enough rest	29. At Kathy (level 33) he can go to the toilet also (if the plants dont eat him)	30. Ducks but also a gate and a nice spot for the topiaries at Rusty (level 33)

Of all I have seen I like the solution of Archit the best: he extends the avatar spot to become the main place for the buildings right to the side of the field:

image72 30 original ways to lock your FarmVille avatar Part I

The largest game EVER: mind dazzling FarmVille user growth statistics

FarmVilleDate 119 (Saturday, October 17, 2009) 2 comments

The site allfacebook.com is an interesting site to follow daily. I found on there the article on how Zynga copied FarmTown to FarmVille ruthlessly (like Maffia Wars) but also an up to date statistics overview of all Facebook applications.

the Leaderboard shows Zynga on an absolute #1 position. For each developer the applications are tracked e.g. for Zynga the list can be found here:

image26 The largest game EVER: mind dazzling FarmVille user growth statistics

As you can see FarmVille is the #1 application of the #1 developer within Facebook with a stunning number of daily users.

Per application you can find the growth numbers and e.g. for FarmVille the growth is also stunning:

image27 The largest game EVER: mind dazzling FarmVille user growth statistics

So… when comparing this stats with e.g. mmorps like World of Warcraft (the biggest by far) FarmVille not only beats it but the user community is at least 6 times as big!! (!) And … as you can see from the charts from September-October it is rising fast.

I think there is no game out there even remotely successful or bigger than FarmVille and this was confirmed by a press article that I found by Zynga:

Zynga's FarmVille Becomes Largest and Fastest Growing Social Game Ever

More than 11 Million Virtual Farmers Play FarmVille Daily

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Zynga (www.zynga.com), the largest developer of social games, announced today that its wildly popular FarmVille game is the largest and fasting growing social game in history with more than 11 million daily active users. Since its launch on June 19th, 2009, FarmVille has attracted more than 1 million new daily active users a week, on average.

FarmVille is a light, fast and fun game where players create and manage their own virtual farm. Like all Zynga games, FarmVille lets you play, invest and express by plowing, growing and harvesting a variety of crops for money and game points. Players also have options to invest in their farms by purchasing fruit trees and farm animals such as pigs and cows, and compliment their crops with other farm assets such as barns, windmills and greenhouses. Nurturing the farm is the key to success for players and their network of fellow farmer friends--those who tend their crops diligently will see their farms flourish and their bank accounts swell. Players' friends are a key element of success in FarmVille.

"FarmVille demonstrates the huge market potential of social gaming - in just 9 weeks the game has become a cultural phenomenon," said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. "No other application has achieved what this game has in such a short amount of time. Who would have guessed that FarmVille is now the biggest online game in North America and quickly becoming the biggest online game in the world."

"FarmVille's growth is nothing short of spectacular and a clear indicator that we have a winning formula for giving players around the world a virtual farming experience that they truly enjoy," said Mark Skaggs, VP and GM of Zynga's Social RTS studio. "By combining the best elements of social gaming, with people's instinct to nurture, we've created an incredibly fun, wholesome and rewarding experience."

About Zynga

Zynga is the largest social gaming company with 27 million daily users and 93 million monthly users. Zynga's games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Tagged, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include FarmVille, Texas Hold'Em Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Street Racing, and Scramble. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Zynga is headquartered at the Chip Factory in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.

SOURCE: Zynga

Playing the game, I begin to understand why there are server issues: lost properties,slowness, out of sync problems: this is because there was never a game application which such an amount of concurrent users. This is a first timer for even the most experienced tech people you can find anywhere.

So not only socially it is interesting but also on a technical level: how do these guys cope with such a amount of traffic, I hope we get some information on that some day.

unusual Tombstones in FarmVille

FarmVilleDate 118 (Friday, October 16, 2009) 10 comments

image21 unusual Tombstones in FarmVille

How to fertilize crops in FarmVille for the Crop Whisperer Ribbon

FarmVilleDate 118 (Friday, October 16, 2009) 10 comments

We all worked hard to photograph farms for the Shutterbug Ribbons but they have gone and instead a new Achievement has been added: the Crop Whisperer

image22 How to fertilize crops in FarmVille for the Crop Whisperer Ribbon

Apparently random people get bags of fertilizers. With that bags you can grow super crops on neighbors farms. They sparkle, are bigger and give higher XP. (hmmm… I will leave some room for that :) ). On the forums of the fanpages we found tjos picture from Charlie Mewengkang to show off the extra big artichokes:

9634 103079493042234 100000205500038 81960 4076310 n How to fertilize crops in FarmVille for the Crop Whisperer Ribbon

This information is from the forum:

Randomly selected users will receive 5 Bags of Fertilizer, per neighbor, per day. Those players can then use the fertilizer on crops on their neighbors' farms.
Fertilizer bags are rewarded when you complete a friend mission (pulling weeds, chasing crows, etc.) and removed when you visit another neighbors farm.
Once a crop has been fertilized, it will appear bigger than normal crops and sparkle.

And this information is from the farmville freak:

“Hey Farmers!

We’re very happy to introduce our latest feature: Crop Fertilizer!
How does it work? Simple!
Randomly selected users will receive 5 Bags of Fertilizer, per neighbor, per day. Those players can then use the fertilizer on crops on their neighbors’ farms.
Fertilizer bags are awarded when you complete a friend mission (pulling weeds, chasing crows, etc.) and removed when you visit another neighbors farm.
Once a crop has been fertilized, it will appear bigger than normal crops and sparkle.
Don’t let them wither, fertilized crops reward experience points when harvested!
We hope you enjoy the new feature, everyone!

Happy Farming!”

Limited (17 days) set of Halloween items in FarmVille

FarmVilleDate 117 (Thursday, October 15, 2009) no comments

Today, users saw the temporary Halloween Message, which means some nice new goodies! (which are available for a period of 17 days)

image15 Limited (17 days) set of Halloween items in FarmVille

image16 Limited (17 days) set of Halloween items in FarmVille

The Animated Haunted House is the most expensive. It will cost 60 FV (!). But of course this is something extremely cool to have on your property.

image17 Limited (17 days) set of Halloween items in FarmVille

In the decoration setting, the two limited trees have gone (too bad if you missed them) and 7 new limited items have appeared. They are all pretty cheap, except for the Giant Spider Web which is another 30 FV.

So for 90 FV ($20) you can be the owner of the complete set of limited Halloween items!

So let me now search through my list of 656 FarmVille neighbors and friends to see who has invested this big amount of money in a FarmVille Halloween spot…

image19 Limited (17 days) set of Halloween items in FarmVille