TopMafia.info - Adds, Invites, Tips, Tricks, etc: March 2011

Another limited time missing has been release, again this one has a bit over 7 days to complete start to end the good news is there are only 6 missions to complete, and 5 bosses to take down!
So it shouldn't take you to long to finish in fact with a bit of pre-planing you should finish it Easy!

Part1: Origin Story

Get support from you Mafia 6 times
Rob 8 times in Bangkok
Build 1 Armour

Part 2: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Boss fight John Yun
Fighter 25 Opponents in Bangkok
Declare war 2 times

Part 3: Greed is great

Get support form your Mafia 7 times
Rob 12 times in NY
Boss Fight Alex Nash

Part 4: Town Painted Red

Rob 10 times in Vegas
Ask for 5 backpacks from Mafia
Collect from your Poker room 1 time

Part 5: Battle: Last Vegas

Boss fight Victor Lil' Loco Alves
Ice 5 players in Vegas
Declare war once

Part 6: Blood and Wine

Rob 13 times in Italy
Collect from your Auto Boutique 1 time
Boss Fight: Richie Carone

Forum contest April Awesomeness!

April Awesomeness has been started by Rinzier the newest Mafia Wars Super mod you can read his post here

The main quote is here "We have received numerous reports that the Daily Fanblasts need to be updated, so head here and let us know what YOU want to see given away!"

And here is the visual picture of the Brackets going into the league of questions

The questions START....

Honestly Just make sure you vote for skill points or Reward points every chance you get as you DON'T want a bunch of worthless consumables instead do you?

Mafia Wars players helping one another

During my time in Mafia Wars I have meet many a stranger and many that I now call friends. Michael is one of those I would gladly call a friend! I've had the pleasure of meeting him, his wife, and their kids over the last year, and they are the most wonderful tight nit family but they are in desperate need of your help!

Misty the Woman behind Mistyfield Mafia Wars & Pimping does a lot for the Mafia Wars community as well as well as running a little non-profit site to help those in real need! For Friends Sake is currently dedicated to helping Michael V who is in the unfortunately situation of having debt collectors chasing him, after a auto accident and loosing his job as a consequence thus leading to him falling behind in re-payments for his house.
Michael isn't asking anyone to bail him out of Debt, he has recently gone through the process of refinancing but, the Bank of America is after him for a immediate down payment of $600.
So I ask you please do what you can, Topmafia has over 34K fans, if everyone just donated what they could this would help Michael V out, as well as help For Friends Sake with any future Success Stories.

Please donate what you can, skip your coffee tomorrow and donate $5 today

Live support, the Rumours, and some answers!

Live support is a great thing, when you can find it! The problem is a lot of times people cant find it!
This leads to Rumours, and I'm sure I've heard every rumour under the sun!
The 2 biggest live support rumours is its ONLY for USA players, to its only there for Paying customers....

So for the 10th I'm sure. Live support is there for all, when agents are free to help... And that's the catch WHEN they are free
I am a AUSTRALIAN, so that means I'm outside the USA - Rumour 1 down
and I'm yet to drop a $ into my account - Rumour 2 down

So now that settled some of the rumours how do you find live chat?

First head to the customer support site for Mafia Wars
This can be found in game, by clicking Account, then Support

IF your lucky you will find the Live chat button on the right. Click it to open the popup if your unlucky you can start hitting refresh over and over, waiting for the option to appear, or you can try this link it should force the popup, but it will only work if there is room in the queue

Next fill in your details and click Live chat

Click ok and start the waiting game, if your Lucky you will find a Customer support agent to help you and get your problem hopefully resolved

So I hope this has settled some of the rumours about Live chat, its there for all to use, When a representative is free, if no one is free, then there is no live chat!
Lastly be NICE yo your agent, they didn't cause the problem but they are there to help! Remember you can only throw stones at the developers that cause all the problems not the customer support agents that are there to clean up the mess!

How good is your Spanish?

Well this has been a problem plaguing a few accounts for a while players properties changing language without warning, Here is the port in Italy, showing Spanish. Notice that Zynga can still get "Buy again 16RP" in English!

Secondly here is is my workshop in Brazil Yes you can see my default language is English yet Zynga for some reason thinks this works better.

Personally I'm not sure what language this is, Google translate is undecided if its Spanish or Italian... Maybe its both! If anyone out there knows for sure what language this is PLEASE comment below!

As this is a issue I've seen many people complain about I thought I would go check the support site to see if i could find something to fix it myself, the good news is a found a support document the problem was it wasn't any help at all

I was lucky enough to find Live chat, the bad news is they didn't have a answer either :(

Transcript

Jane: Hello

Jane: i wanted to ask you why is some of my brazilian properties in spanish?

Arvin G.: Can you try to check if Spanish is also selected on the language settings of Mafia Wars.

Jane: its not

Jane: sometimes they are in english and sometimes in spanish

Arvin G.: Thank you for confirming that. I would need to further investigate about the problem that you have encountered there might be a display error with regards to your account that needs to be adjusted but I do not have the tool to update it.

Arvin G.: I am sorry, but unfortunately I am unable to resolve your issue at this particular time. I am forwarding your issue to our development team for research and this process may take some time.

The only thing I'm glad of is a Picture speaks in every language, so at least I can memorise the images and know what I'm building!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

New Level up Bonus for some players

A New level up bonus has been released for some players, this is what's known as a experimental beta, its released to a small percentage of players so they can experience it, and Zynga watches them to see if they like it or not, some thing in game that we know and love every day started out like this beta here.....

This new level up feature, comes in many different sorts already, but the main factor is after allocating your skill points, you have a chance of receiving a bonus!

Thanks to Mikko for the image

All players get a bonus every level, but once every 5 levels they get a "Golden Promotion" and have a chance of winning some of the better rewards as shown above

The problem is some players have a share and post to news feed, others are haunted with this method of sharing below, posting directly to someone's page, and we all know how much we ignore our own walls!

Thanks to Bill for this image and the one above

Personally I don't have this feature yet, and I don't know if I want it, I'd have to allocate all my skill points for a chance of the bonus, and we all know with Zynga the bonus we want doesn't drop that often!

That's a LOT of skills to allocate for a CHANCE of 3 attack or defence points!

So what do you guys think a good feature or a bad one?

Brazil Mission Have Disappeared!!!

Some players missions have been lost somewhere between Italy and Brazil, and woke one morning to find this greeting them

If they contacted customer support, they might of been lucky enough to be greeted with this copy & paste response

Thanks to Sam of Sams corner. for these 2 images

But You know life is bad, when you have a whole customer support page dedicated to your fault!

If they want the problem fixed they have to Vote for it? Hang on, I have to vote to have my problems fixed now? Can the fact that you have had to put up a dedicated support page say that there is a problem? and it needs to be fixed?Vote!

Either way to help your Mafioso's in arms CLICK HERE go to the support page and Vote!

Free Defence Point 29th of March

No one @ Zynga bothered to update their Love it Tab on the fan page, and give us the Calendar for March, so In true TopMafia Style I made my own!

14th http://zyn.ga/3We 1 stamina

15th http://zyn.ga/3Wf 1 skill

16th http://zyn.ga/3Wg 1 attack

17th http://zyn.ga/3Wh 1 defence

18th http://zyn.ga/3Wi 1 health

19th http://zyn.ga/3Wj 1 energy

20th http://zyn.ga/3Wk 1 stamina

21st http://zyn.ga/3Wl 1 skill

22nd http://zyn.ga/3Wm 1 attack

23rd http://zyn.ga/3Wn 1 defence

24th http://zyn.ga/3Wo 1 health

25th http://zyn.ga/3Wp 1 energy

26th http://zyn.ga/3Wq 1 stamina

27th http://zyn.ga/3Wr 1 skill

28th http://zyn.ga/3Ws 1 attack

29th http://zyn.ga/3Wt 1 defence <- Today's Point

30th http://zyn.ga/3Wu 1 health

31st http://zyn.ga/3Wv 1 energy

Zynga Please note, My Calendar making skills are open, I accept all payments in RP!

Zynga and Lady Gaga team up to help Japan

We might say bad things about Zynga 364 Days a year, but they always find a reason for us to say nice things for a change. Our hearts go out to those still suffering from the Japan Earthquake and I hope that Zynga & Lady Gaga's donations help those in need

Hmmm I wonder why Mafia Wars wasn't mentioned, yet really small games like Words with Friends was... maybe Mark doesn't play Mafia Wars, get he couldn't survive the shark tank!

Thanks to Da Irish Kid, and Jennifer for the heads up!

New Achivements!

Click to enlarge each image

Special thanks to Paul, who earned the first achievement yesterday!

I do hope you enjoy all these achievements as much as i do, I know I should already have most of them!

More Mission Bugs

This time around less of a bug, and more of a question does Zynga even play their own games? Please read the description of the Mission

"Rosa controls most of the air traffic in this region, but we managed to sneak out using a private plane. Good work"

But hang on we get Rosa's Luxury Helicopter as the reward... Not her Private plane!
I'm starting to wonder more and more if Zynga even puts up with their own spamy game!

Also note that the 65 Missions for Brazil, their details are posted here and here

Monday, March 28, 2011

Popups that work!

Just before the weekend Zynga launched some update, that broke all popups on a unframed game.... but more importantly broke all popups on MafiaWars.com
As Zynga programmers have the weekend off, doing whatever it is that Zynga programmers do on weekend (we know its not looking thru lines of code fixing bugs) Our coders on this side of the lines where busy looking into what they could do to fix a unframed game, their first attempt working, but giving us no popups, their second attempt worked but gave us every popup that could!

Finally I bring the good news that their third attempt has corrected the problem, and Martin over @ team Spockholm has come to our rescue!

So if you don't have a copy of unframe its time you got one, it can be found either on the Spockholm site or you can drag drop it from here

Unframe-MW

Remember Click once to unframe, and click a second time to add scroll bars and enable the popups that count, Heal. Bank, robbing bonus, building in New York

Zynga the Ultimate popup blocker!

Free Attack point 28th of March

No one @ Zynga bothered to update their Love it Tab on the fan page, and give us the Calendar for March, so In true TopMafia Style I made my own!

14th http://zyn.ga/3We 1 stamina

15th http://zyn.ga/3Wf 1 skill

16th http://zyn.ga/3Wg 1 attack

17th http://zyn.ga/3Wh 1 defence

18th http://zyn.ga/3Wi 1 health

19th http://zyn.ga/3Wj 1 energy

20th http://zyn.ga/3Wk 1 stamina

21st http://zyn.ga/3Wl 1 skill

22nd http://zyn.ga/3Wm 1 attack

23rd http://zyn.ga/3Wn 1 defence

24th http://zyn.ga/3Wo 1 health

25th http://zyn.ga/3Wp 1 energy

26th http://zyn.ga/3Wq 1 stamina

27th http://zyn.ga/3Wr 1 skill

28th http://zyn.ga/3Ws 1 attack <- Today's Point

29th http://zyn.ga/3Wt 1 defence

30th http://zyn.ga/3Wu 1 health

31st http://zyn.ga/3Wv 1 energy

Zynga Please note, My Calendar making skills are open, I accept all payments in RP!

Infested with bugs, RewardVille next

Well we know Mafia Wars has its own collection of bugs, but these are breading and spreading it seems!
Rewardville has been infected

Thanks to Paul for pointing this one out

The good news is the Zynga team has been past with the bug spray and got RewardVille back on its feet, the only problem now is it seems all outstanding RewardVille mystery gifts have been neutered

Sure anything sent from now on should work, but to be honest how often does anyone check their RewardVille gifts? Every game now has its own built in message centre for accepting and sending gifts, there seems little reason to check out the Facebook requests page any more!

When checking mine today, I had over 40 outstanding Rewardville gifts all had already been neutered by the Zynga bug squad. So far I haven't got anything "good" from these Mystery Gifts but I'm sure I'm not alone in accepting RewardVille gifts maybe once a week or so, I just hope this doesn't become a regular thing, I remember Zynga killing off all mystery bags more then once in the past, maybe we should expect the same from RewardVille and accept our gifts more often!

Bullying When is enough enough?

Bullying has been a hot topic in Mafia Wars for as long as I can remember! Overall Players have got more wise over the years and "go with the flow" much more often. Now that more people understand being "ICED" isnt such a bad thing, I remember back before Cuba was released, when attacking more then 3 times was considered bullying!

But Bullying is still a problem, we still hear complaints from far and wide, those first entering into the shark tank, hitting level 450 and suddenly finding level 2000+ stamping on them all day long! As well as players who dont like the PVP part of the game, and every time they are ICED still show up on the Official forums to complain, lastly those players who get Iced, click Heal, and get re-iced by the same player, oh and I almost forgot about those players who click Hitlist over and over, thinking that its doing something good for them, oh if only they knew!

We all know Bullying goes on, and more often then not it gets sorted out, either with one player either giving up, or the bully being bullied into submission... I've even been subjected to Bullying, sure its ranged from someone running attackX on me for a few hours, all the way up to the guy who thought he had the best idea in the world sitting on me after every post I made for 3 months

At the end of the day I'm sure we have all been subjected to bullying in one shape or another

But when is Enough Enough? That is the question!
At what point should it go from "harmless fun" into something more serious? and at what point should Zynga or Facebook step in and sort the matter out?

Sure I don't expect Facebook or Zynga to step in whenever 2 players get into a fight, nore do I think the fight list needs some sort of padding placed around it for those who fall (or get thrown) out of the ring! but surely there has to be a point when its gotten to extremes and one of these 2 companies need to step in to sort out matters

Why do I bring this up now? Well the answer is a Friend of mine Susan Wells is considering quitting, yep that's right after over 2 years playing Mafia Wars, as well as being the founding member of ๑۞๑ [ஜTHXஜ]๑۞๑ Mafia Wars TIPS TRICKS & INFO she has decided after being bullied for over a year, enough is enough and its time to Quit! What makes it worse, is this isn't a case of just Bulling he is actively extorting players! That's right, asking for loot to stop attacking, and no longer satisfied with just loot, he is also asking for game cards!

So I ask you again When is Enough Enough? Can Facebook or Zynga step in and do something about this? Well we would have to check their Terms of Service to know for sure

Hmmm seems like its within Zynga's Scope to be able to step in, and sort this problem out, but then again because the messages are being sent on Facebooks network maybe it should be Facebooks responsibility's to step in and correct the situation I wonder if their long list of fine print it covers extortion rackets?

Yep they are covered as well, So this brings me back to my first question, When is Enough Enough? and at what point Should Zynga or Facebook step in? They have both been emailed by the Lady in question, and she has provided numerous screen shots, and other information regarding these events, but as of yet no action by either party

Maybe we have to wait till we see a headline in the papers

"Facebook user commits suicide after been bullied playing Zynga game"

Maybe that will wake both companies up to the fact they it doesn't matter if they are Private or Public companies they still have a responsibly to the community that uses their services

So I ask you one more time, When is enough enough? Leave your comments below