The Ultimate Event Failure

Well once again Zynga has proven how they can screw up an event. Tonite they blew up the Armored Truck LIVE on USTREAM in celebration of US the players. LMAO what a joke.

First off the announcer was horrible and not professional, he had no idea what to talk about and gave us no real info on the event. None of the Mafia Wars executives were there, only low level staff. Even the CEO Mark Pincus didnt show up !!!

They got a celebrity to blow up the truck, Snoop Dogg. Are you kidding me ??? They said they couldn't think of a better person to do it. LMAO !!! I could and so could the entire Mafia Wars Community. They get a rapper, a gangsta, a person who has no idea what Mafia Wars is and told everyone to buy the game in the stores. Plus the fact all he did was curse up a storm and even worse was BLOCKED THE SHOT of the explosion.

I mean come on they could of got Joe Pesci, DeNiro, the cast from the Sopranos. How about that for a celebrity guest to blow up the truck. They would of been a better choice and would of represented the game better as they played Mafia members.

This was a complete waste of time for all of us, a total failure on Zynga's part. I mean the celebrity you got cursed so much a truck driver would of blushed. They should of prepared him better for the event and told him no cursing. I mean come on some of us had our kids watching because we thought it would be fun for them to see.

The Mafia Wars Community as a whole I can assure you were very disappointed. The event was a complete FAIL !!! We were all Zynga'd !!! I wonder who will win the prizes of $25,000 and all those iPads. I bet Snoop Dogg gets one LOL !!!

I Am Fighting To Try And Get You Some Answers

Here Is an email I sent to Facebook & the mucky mucks there to try and get answers for all of you with these questions. I figured I would start with these questions first and try for more later. They never return any phone calls or answer any emails thats why I put some of the big boys on it.

from: john sweeney

to: pjanzer@facebook.com, bling@facebook.com, mzuckerberg@facebook.com, eschrage@facebook.com, elliot@facebook.com, josofsky@facebook.com, info@facebook.com, legal@facebook.com, customerservice@facebook.com, press@facebook.com

date Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 3:06 PM

subject I need answers for my show and column

mailed-by gmail.com hide details 3:06 PM (1 hour ago)

To the following at Facebook,

I have repeatedly attempted to contact you for comments to some questions I have for a column I am writing and for answers to my listeners on my talk radio show. I have never heard back from anyone to address these concerns that your users are encountering, So I will try once again. If you would be so kind as to answer my questions please I would greatly appreciate it.

My questions are as follows :

1. Why the sudden change in policy as to what a fake account is? You have been disabling hundreds of good peoples accounts for what you are saying, "they have been reported as fake accounts" . When in fact they are not fake accounts but have been reported this way to you as a tactic by some groups who play mafia wars in order to win a virtual war in a game.

Here is a sample of your form letter to some of the players.

Hi XXXXX,

Your account has been disabled because we have determined that you are not representing yourself authentically on Facebook. Fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. All accounts must abide by the following policies:

• You must provide your real first name and last name.

• Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited.

• Profiles created to represent celebrities, pets, ideas, or inanimate objects are strictly prohibited.

• Profiles created for the purpose of spamming or harassing others are strictly prohibited.

People on Facebook want to interact with their real friends and the people they know in the real world. Since fake accounts can damage the integrity of this environment, they are not allowed to remain on the site

Unfortunately, we will not be able to reactivate this account for any reason, nor will we provide further information about your violation or the systems we have in place. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Thanks for your understanding,

Eli

User Operations

Now in a majority of these cases you have reinstated these people and in some like the letter above states but you have never offered them any reason why it was done and by whom as they do have a right to know who is reporting them especially when they spend alot of money on their account to play your social games. If you could, please clarify your position on this matter and what can be done to correct this especially on what can be done to the people who falsely accuse Facebook users of having Fake accounts.

2. There is also a major issue that has been coming across from 1000's of users about being disabled for adding friends. Some of these people are being disabled for adding just 4 people. Now you say this is a social site and you encourage people to add their friends and be social BUT how can they is they keep encountering this issue. You do realize that people must add people as friend to play your social games and some of these game require alot of friends to play the games properly. My question is this, Is this just a bug on your side or is this your policy now? I was told once before from a former manager there that the threshold setting were just off and needed to be reset but that has never happened.

3. A big issue people are having is the fact that you are storing users credit info on their pages instead of in a secure location when they purchase Facebook credits for games and other virtual items on your site. Thus exposing the users private credit info to hackers and thus putting the real persons credit information and financial life out there to be stolen from them. Will you be correcting this major issue any time soon ? You also make it impossible for some who have purchased Facebook ads in the past to remove any information without giving you new credit information.

4. Will you be adding REAL customer service for the users of your site instead of directing them to your help center and having other users answer their questions for them? Like adding telephone or online support features. I really appreciate your help in getting these questions answered as they public really needs answers. please feel free to contact me directly either via email or by phone.

Thank you,

John Sweeney

Who To Contact If Your Account Is Disabled.

Hi Everyone, I have some useful information if your Facebook account is disabled. Please save it as you never know when it may come in handy for you or a friend of yours.

As you know Facebook is becoming more and more ANTI-SOCIAL every day and they are disabling accounts for just adding friends amongst other things. So you need to be careful. It seems you also have to be careful when you are in a clan war as there are a few of them reporting accounts to win wars.

Well here is a list of contacts at Facebook on who to contact. A temporary disabled account can stay that way for anywhere from 8 hours to 30 days. If you email Facebook this can be sped up to get you back online quicker as they need to manually override the system and they want a good reason to do this so sob stories help your cause and friends emailing them on you behalf helps too. http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=disabled and you should hound them with emails from yourself and your friends telling them why your account should be restored and be respectful. Here are the email addresses and include your facebook id with each email. Mail at least 2 a day if you give up after a few days you dont have a chance.

info@facebook.com ; disabled@facebook.com ; appeals@facebook.com ; privacy@facebook.com, abuse@facebook.com ; warning@facebook.com ; customerservice@facebook.com ; legal@facebook.com

Also here is some additional contact info for Facebook:

Facebook, Inc.
471 Emerson St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301-1605
or
156 University Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Phone#'s:
650-543-4800
650-853-1300
650-543-4811 (Interview Request Line)
Fax #:650-543-4801

I know how frustrating it can be when your account is disabled. So please be respectful when you send these emails or they will just ignore you and you may never get it back. Remember Facebook does NOT have customer support so don't click that option or it will direct you to the help section and you will be disconnected.

Now I decided to include some information on Zynga too but only customer service info as they actually have a customer service department.

If you run into trouble and need support from Zynga:

Customer Support Site: http://zynga.custhelp.com/app/home/

Customer Support Guide: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=324238

or their direct email for mafia wars support is : mwsupport@zynga.com

Zynga Game Network Inc.
(866) 820-2321
365 Vermont Street San Francisco, CA 94103

So please be careful and I cant stress this enough please be respectful as frustrating as it is. I hope this helps. This information can also be found on my podcast Fan Page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Facebook-Zynga-Podcast/145826638767230 so you can see it there too, but this is easier to share with your friends.

This Weekend In Mafia Wars Land.

Hey everyone well looks like we have a couple of new things this weekend for everyone to play with on Mafia Wars.

The first thing is we have another new collection we need to get and we can get them by collecting Blue & Red mystery bags. It is called the Mystery Bag Collection and they are themed after a mystery book. With a nice loot item for finishing the collection called The Maltese Falcon ( a car ) and it is 42 Attack / 65 Defense. Well at least we don't have to go crazy with this one as most people send them to you anyway.


They also have something called the Mystery Reward Points Piggy Bag. It is a mystery bag that comes and give you reward points. These are rare and come randomly so don't get your hopes up for to many of them.

And finally Mafia Wars brought back Beat The Feds Challenge and once again. But it has been full of glitches and bugs and it has now been pulled for a 3rd time this morning. This response from Customer Service was in the forum and posted this last night. It was then pulled down and is no where to be found. And NO comment from Zynga in the forums.

"We're seeing some technical issues with the Fight Event, so we've slowed down our release while we work on resolving the situation. We want to thank our players for their patience and for immediately providing us with helpful info which we're using to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.

We'll keep you posted on the status of the event as soon as we have more information for you. Again, thanks for your support!"

The event was scheduled to go on for 10 days. And I cant complain as it worked for me and I finished it. But the reports coming in from players everywhere was that it was glitchy and caused a major lag on the game. The lag I did see.

The event uses alot of stamina, and I mean alot and you will burn through your health quickly as you get to the Gold Level. You will also go through alot of your consumables so stock up. But the rewards are very nice once you master them, if you ever get the chance. Check them out.

But it was also locking up the game so you could really play the rest of the game without getting the NEW spinning revolver. So in essence it is good they pulled it again and I know I speak for everyone when I say this. Zynga dont bring it back unless it is fixed fully and the bugs are worked out.

And I really hope they can get this issue resolved soon and compensate all of the players who lost all their stamina/health/consumables/loot and have to redo the fights. Well time will tell wont it.

Well that is for now and the all pictures used in this blog were as a courtesy to Zynga and they own all the rights to them. Also “This blog is not endorsed by or affiliated with Zynga Game Network Inc. or Facebook, Inc.”

Mafia Wars Community: The Past, the Present, & the Future.

Hello Mafia Community Members,

I’m writing this address today because we have several important issues currently that affect many of you and we’d like to take some time to give you an update on our progress as a team. One of the more recent complaints from community is a lack of communication from us and I’m letting you know that this responsibility is on the shoulders of me and my team. We are taking big steps in the right direction to ensure you get your messaging from the development team quicker and in multiple viewing locations.

My team is on the forums daily and one thing we have been great at is delivering your messages to the team, a major kudos go out to Al Catraz and Bandilero our Super Moderators and their moderation teams for staying in constant communication with us at all hours of the day. Also a huge kudos to you, our forum community for working with us to catch issues early after release so we can stomp them out faster. I’ll be addressing several topics which I have highlighted in bold so you can read the portions that you are most interested in hearing about.

COMMUNICATION: Part of our dedication to opening our communication is a promise to deliver release notes to the community. We are ramping up this process now and you all should see our latest notes delivered in easily accessed locations this weekend or early next week. Our Developer Section is full of authorized developers and designers, these folks have been having active discussions with members of our community since that forum was opened in February. If you haven’t stopped by, please visit and see what the latest hot topics in the Developers Section.

GIFTING: Gifting is a natural and fun part of the social sharing within Mafia Wars. Many of you have requested the ability to send more gifts daily. We are working on solutions to this request. We have some changes coming to our system that we hope you are going to enjoy and that make your life a little bit easier. We’ll be able to share more specifics about these changes with you early next week as we get final approval and testing on the things we have been working on since Vegas was released and Myspace was updated. In June we made some changes in the system that slowed down gift sending and we removed some items that were previously giftable to a non giftable state. These decisions were made at a high level because some users were exploiting the systems and duplicating items. Slowing down the gifting program and removing items from the gift list was a temporary solution for us so that we could build in some more sophisticated exploit management tools and detection alerts. As we implement these systems you will see us open up the gifting world again and place more items into the lists again. If you have an item in the game that you would really love to see on the gift list, please visit this thread and make your suggestion. Gift Suggestion Thread

CHEATING: From checkers to chess people will find ways to cheat in a game when you aren’t looking. Mafia Wars is no exception. Earlier this year, our Mafia Wars Executive Team made a commitment to the community that we would crack down on cheating and exploiting in the game. While the evidence of our success may not be obvious to everyone, we have made tremendous progress decreasing the number and impact of cheaters and exploiters in the game. We have a dedicated effort composed of members of our CS, QA, Community, Security and Development Teams working together to fight this fight. Playing against a cheater is a frustrating and non enjoyable experience and we have a serious commitment to eliminate the areas where people can cheat against other honest players.

3rd PARTY TOOLS & PROGRAMS: Are against the rules. We are currently assessing many of these programs and finding out how they interact with our systems to prevent them from causing game imbalances. Furthermore, installing any unverified software can be dangerous to your own system, from both a virus and security standpoint. If you are using a tool or program for some aspect of the game please understand you are doing so at the risk of being flagged for investigation. Investigation on accounts could lead to more serious action or the removal of items or points if it is determined that those items or points did not come from legitimate sources. If you are involved in player to player trading you cannot always be certain that the goods you are receiving are legitimate. We are working on solutions to combat this issue.

3rd PARTY LOOT & POINT SELLERS: Are engaging in fraudulent & illegal activity often obtaining their goods using stolen identities and credit cards. Purchasing points or loot from these sources could leave you at risk within Mafia Wars and within the real world. Before you purchase make certain you are purchasing from an authorized vendor of Zynga and Mafia Wars. Many groups and individuals are good at making fake virtual store fronts. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so be careful to protect you, your account, and your credit score. Make a dent in real internet crime by not supporting unauthorized sellers.

BOYCOTTS & THREATS: These tactics are not necessary to get our attention and often end up ruining relationships that can be constructive rather than destructive. Our forums are the best way to get our attention on matters that are important to you. Mafia Wars community consists of millions of people that play our product daily and tens of millions that play monthly. That’s a lot of people who have a lot of wishes and desires for improving the game. Help us keep our communication lines open. While many of us work long hours, we are required by law to take some down time. This means we must prioritize and schedule the time we do have to work on the issues and features that will bring the biggest impact and improvement to the game and community. With millions of people wanting things from us we are in a constant state of adjusting our road map and resources to meet the most needs fastest. While we understand some issues are more important to you than others our ultimate eye is providing the best social crime game in the world. Any time we have to focus on a boycott or threat from our community this effort takes resource time away from our end goal. Do all of us a favor and keep us working on the things we should be working on. If there is a problem or project you think needs attention use our Customer Support system, forums, or email feedback@mafiawars.com

Mafia Wars has a very bright future and we want all of you to be part of that future. We have some new announcements coming up very soon about features and designs we have been working on and we will to share those with you. We currently are still very much involved in the Las Vegas launch and are looking forward to when our game reaches 10,000,000 visitors so we can blow up the Armored Truck. We also have a few more prizes and promotions surrounding Vegas so keep your ears on for more news on this coming this weekend or early next week. Help us maintain the lines of open, constructive communication and we will respond.

Thank you all for your contributions and supporting us by playing the game. We hope you enjoy the boss event and some other goodies we have ready to go during the continued promotion surrounding our most recent Las Vegas launch and we look forward to bringing you some new and hot announcements very soon about some new features we’ve been working on that we hope will blow you away.

Best,

Jonezie Malone

Senior Community Manager Mafia Wars

"This is being shared as a courtesy for Zynga Game Network Inc."

Facebook Has A Major Issue With Facebook Credits That Could Leave You Vulnerable to Hackers !!!

Facebook has a major issue issue with their Facebook Credit System that can affect you if your account is ever hacked.

Alot of you have seen this message going out to the various clans and on peoples profiles :

The last method of payment you used to purchase RPs from Zynga has been AUTOMATICALLY saved in Facebook!

This method will be used to pay for any RP purchases you make, and you do not get to verify anything before it is used. It will not even direct you to PayPal to verify the payment -- it is automatically authorized.

To delete these payment methods:

1) Go to Facebook Account, Account Settings
2) Click the "Payments" tab
3) Click the "manage" out beside "Payment methods"

If you used a credit card, there will be credit card information listed. If you used PayPal, at the bottom it indicates the email address used for your PayPal account.

YOU MUST DELETE THIS!!!! If someone hacks your Facebook account, they can now make Facebook-related purchases automatically without any additional approval or passwords needed! I assume you will need to delete this information after every Zynga purchase.

Well this as it turns out is more serious that what it says. Yes, your information is saved after every purchase and you will need to delete it, if you can. Most people have been able to remove it on their own. But if you dont remove it, you will leave yourself vulnerable to any hackers who get into your Facebook account.

It seems all reward points purchases made BEFORE Zynga's recent 1 day blow out sale are SAFE, these where handled by Zynga directly. All purchases made afterwards where made through Zynga then converted into FB Credits, then Back into RP and this is how Facebook has gathered your details

BUT, and this is where the scary part comes in. If you used that credit card or paypal info to purchase an ad on Facebook for one of your pages then you are out of luck.

You can NOT remove your credit card info you will get this message :

Unable to remove this credit card because it is the primary funding source for your Facebook Ads account. To remove this card, you must first change your primary funding source from the Ads Manager. You may also close your Facebook Ads account to stop all advertising and remove all cards from your account.

Ok now when you try to remove your Facebook Ads account you will get this message :

This is your primary funding source. We will attempt to bill invoices against your primary funding source first. However, in the event that a payment fails, we will attempt to bill other funding sources associated with your account.

You cannot edit or remove your primary funding source. In order to remove this funding source, you must first make another funding source the primary source. To edit the billing details for this source, add it again and then remove the original entry for the funding source.

And this is even if that card expired you cant remove it with out giving them another one. So as you can see once again Facebook has left you vulnerable to hackers and they have refused to contact me or comment on this issue after numerous attempts. REAL NICE FACEBOOK.

They have once again let you, their VALUED user, exposed to the elements and with this open graph of theirs Hackers are becoming more of an issue everyday.

And this is not only isolated to Zynga but every social game, and Facebook credits purchase you make. Yes Every One. So you are at their mercy once again.

There are also reports of peoples accounts being double and tripled billed for purchases they never made.

So the bottom line here is that I am recommending that you be very careful with any game purchases or any purchases on Facebook for now. Until they address this issue and eliminate the bugs and allow your credit info to be completely removed with no restrictions I say dont buy anything on Facebook, if you need to buy game credits get a game gift card and enter it on the games site as that is still safe. And if you must make purchases through the game remember to remove that info so just in case a hacker does get hold of your Facebook account they dont get your credit card info too.

The Mafia Wars Changes Continue ...

Hi Everyone, we got lots to cover so lets get right to it.

The first thing I want to cover is my new podcast, The Facebook & Zynga Podcast http://www.blogtalkradio.com/john-sweeney-jr , if you didn't get to hear the show LIVE dont worry I have another LIVE show on Monday Aug 9th at 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT. All you do is wait till show goes LIVE and call this number Call-in Number: (347) 327-9074. You also have the option to talk VIA Skype by clicking talk and that is a free connection. I am sorry for my deaf fans I dont have an option for you at this time but I do have a LIVE Chat that goes on during show and I will see your questions and will try to answer them in the chat room during the show as well as say it on the show. You also have an option of buying a copy of the transcript of show but that is very expensive. You can still listen to my show in archives if you miss any you just cant call in to them LOL.

I have requests into both Facebook & Zynga to appear on the show to help answer your questions but to date they have declined. I will continue to try as I really want you to get answers direct from the horse's mouth instead of listening to all the rumors that go around.

So If you have questions about Facebook or Zynga Games dont be shy call in and I will try and get to you and answer your questions. Plus join our fan page on Facebook and you can leave your questions there on the wall. http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Facebook-Zynga-Podcast/145826638767230

Okay now Zynga has made some changes and nerfed & changed alot of stuff. The fighting has been changed again. This time in Cuba & Moscow.

In Cuba, you no longer fight with the 501 mafia most of you have. You take 50 others into the fight with you for a max of 51 fighting on each side. You used your top 51 weapons, armor, vehicles, and animals. To be honest their own moderators dont even know how this is supposed to work yet.

In Moscow, the power is in the skills. The higher your attack skills, the more damage you will inflict upon your opponent. The higher your defense skills the lower your damage will be when being attacked.

Fighting in Vegas, NY, and Bangkok remain unchanged at the time of this message.

New "Super Fight Loot" has been added to fighting. This loot will ONLY drop if you are attacking another person with a mafia of 501. Here is the loot that is considered "Super Fight Loot":

Also Mafia Wars has changed gifting AGAIN. This time they made it so you cant add any high end loot from Bangkok & Vegas to your wishlist. When you try it comes up as, "This item is not a valid selection".

I think this is their way to control the loot traders more than the everyday player but that does make me feel better about it, nor is it fair. If I have 200 extra Titanium Katars that I am no longer using then I should be able to gift them to my fellow players who need them to help make their character better and they should be able to add them to their wishlist so I can send them.

You can send them thru Arun's Chucker but I dont recommend the use of any bookmarklets as Zynga is cracking down on the use of them as well. I will get into that later.

Mafia Wars has nerfed the entire gifting system from the delay in between each gift sent to telling us what we can send it is just ridiculous. How about concentrating on fixing the bugs and glitches before doing stuff like this.

You know I really find it funny how they can fix this stuff and but when it comes to game play we get this as an answer from them, " This is a known issue and the developers are working to correct the problem".

Well I can go on forever with this but I digress let go on to our next topic. The use of bookmarklets and Bots.

The official answer I received from Zynga in regards to this is this,

"Anything that is not YOU playing the game, is against our Terms of Service. We do not allow bots or Scripts to be used.".

Will Zynga ever endorse the use of these things ??? NO they wont. Will they ever come out with their own??? I dont think so, at least not anytime soon. I know for a fact that by using these bookmarlets & bots it makes the game more enjoyable for a majority of us who dont have the time to sit there and play the game for 24 hours a day. But the bottom line is that Zynga does not endorse or approve of any of them.

Does this mean you will be disabled or suspended for using them. Not necessarily!!! I think it is fair to assume that if you use these bookmarklets you use them at your own risk. I would like to think that Zynga has more sense than that.

I dont think they will say much about you using Switch, the MW Analyzer or even Chucker if you are only sending a few items to a friend. They are going after loot traders and seem to be looking for unusual activity like bulk sends of gifts especially High End Loot. Here is what they send to them.

So they are going after them and it seems from all reports only them. Do I think you should use your Brawler, Chucker etc... I think if you do, you do it at your own risk. That all I will say as I will not endorse the use of them either. But I do like them.

And finally Mafia Wars has come out with a new sweepstakes "Mafia Wars Las Vegas Sweepstakes" and yes it is only open to US Residents over the age of 21. You can win a $25,000 Grand Prize just by visiting Las Vegas and having your mafia visit too. Plus they have a weekly contest where 10 people win an iPad agin you get entries when you and your mafia visit Las Vegas. Plus they will also blow up a Armored Truck when they get to 10,000,000 visitors to Las Vegas and stream it LIVE on http://www.mafiawars.com

So there you have it thats what I have for today I hope this helps. See you next time and make sure you listen to my BlogTalkRadio Podcast "The Facebook & Zynga Podcast" on Monday August 9th at 6 PM ET / 3 PT and you can still catch me on the Evil Ed Podcast plus coming soon a new podcast for a HOT new TV Show on American Movie Classics " The Walking Dead" and check out or fan page on Facebook for some really kool show happenings and exclusive behind the scenes news on the show http://www.facebook.com/pages/Evil-Eds-THE-WALKING-DEAD-Podcast/139906729360335