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Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced Farmville for iPhone at WWDC 2010. While announcing the “Farming for iPhone”, Mark said:

“We now have withering crop push notifications.With Farmville on the iPhone, you’ll be able to farm anytime, anywhere. But I’m most excited about how good tractoring just got.”

Farmville for iPhone will include in-app purchases from marketplace. More details will be available soon. Here is the screenshot of the Farmville iPhone app:

Farmville iPhone WWDC 2010

Farmville iPhone WWDC 2010

Image Credits: Engadget

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Facebook and Zynga have grown together. Zynga, in fact, has grown over the shoulder of Facebook. But looks like the long time partners are going to part now. Facebook has been increasingly offensive on denying Zynga and other Facebook app developers to notify users through status updates and emails. On the other hand, Zynga has also been using handful of measures to survive the Facebook offense and capture users’ email addresses to . They did launch Farmville.com and ported Farmville on MSN Games. But up till now they haven’t really grown apart from Facebook, they haven’t offered a way for users to register and play social games. The only way to log in, even on MSN Games and Farmville.com, has been through Facebook Connect. But it looks like now the things are getting worse between Facebook & Zynga.

According to TechCrunch, they have received an email from an anonymous, but reliable, source who witnessed Zynga CEO Mark Pincus telling Zynga employees that they may need to prepare for a break up with Facebook. Here is what Mark Pincus said exactly, on Thursday evening:

Pincus announced at a 5pm meeting yesterday at Zynga that Zynga was going to launch a social game network called Zynga Live. The Zynga Live initiative was a social gaming network. Facebook and Zynga has been negotiating on Facebook Credits and the talks turned for the worst. In the negotiation process, Facebook shut off Zynga’s feeds and threatened to shut down games. Zynga in the process threatened to completely leave Facebook and prepared to do so in the previous upcoming weeks.

It’s also learnt that this may happen any time. “It could be tomorrow, it could be 6 months”, says one source.

via TechCrunch

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I’m sure there would be many waiting to play Farmville game on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. There is a little hint that the popular game would be coming to iPhone, iPad and Android devices soon while Zynga has already revealed plans of an SMS based update service for Farmville sometime soon. The hint of Zynga’s proposed plans to launch Farmville for iPad, iPhone and Android was taken from analyzing the whois records of some of the domains related to Farmville, all of which belong to the same owner i.e. DNStination Inc.. Here are the domains:

However whois records may not be trusted and these domains may not belong to Zynga. The news also got a mention from Mashable who followed up with Zynga Spokesperson and got this response: “Zynga plans to expand to various mobile platforms. We cannot provide additional information at this time.”

Reasons why this news sounds fake

Despite Zynga’s plans to switch to mobile platforms, there remain some questions and doubts:

  1. iPhone and iPad do NOT support Flash, and never will; as it appears at the moment. Farmville is based on Flash, how will it bring the browser-like gameplay to mobile platforms without Flash?
  2. If Zynga were planning Farmville for iPhone, they didn’t need domain names specifically for iPhone and iPad. They would need to build an app, not a website.
  3. Zynga have been planning mobile updates for Mafia Wars and Farmville since December last year, why would they register the domain on April 14?

On basis of reasons above, Farmville for iPad, iPhone and Android seems like fake but there is still no official word on it. We will keep you updated at that.

Update: Farmville for iPhone is officially announced at WWDC 2010 and will be coming at end of June 2010.

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Farmville Farm of the Week Contest

On March 4, 2010, in Games, by TechAdmin
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Farmville LogoFarmville has now introduced a farm of the week contest that will run on weekly basis. In past, Farmville has been introducing different farm competitions on special events, latest one was the Farmville valentine’s day farm decoration contest that was held on February 14, 2010. Now Farmville has decided to run farm competitions on weekly basis. Each week there will be a thread posted on official Farmville forums and participating users will have to submit their farm picture on in that particular thread. The winner will be selected every Friday, announced on Monday on official fan page of Farmville and will be rewarded with 100 Farm Cash plus will get featured spot on official Farmville fan page. So if you are willing to participate in the contest, you should post your farm image in Farmville farm of the week competition thread on Farmville forums.

This seems like a well planned offering from Zynga. Pictures will be posted in Farmville Forums – So you have to be a member of the forums, if you’re not. Winners will be announced on Official fan page – So you have to be a fan of the page. This week’s entries can be posted here.

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Farmville LogoZynga has denied the rumors that its popular game Farmville will move to paid subscription based model. There has been unconfirmed news that Zynga might be charging a fee of $5.99 per month to let users access Farmville. It caused a wave of disappointment around Farmville users around the globe. While many still believed that Zynga, whose Farmville already brings handsome profit in form of virtual money, would not be charging its users to access and play the game. Some feared that the rumors of Farmville going for subscription based service may be true which meant they will have to pay $5.99 to play Farmville. However, now Zynga has cleared the air on this issue with their email to CNET, saying that they will not be charging for the popular social game.

Charging its users is clearly not a solution to maximize the profits. Zynga may, however, still release a premium version of the game that will have some additional features rather than making the whole application a subscription based service.

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Farmville Unwither Ring on Valentine’s Day

On February 12, 2010, in Games, by TechAdmin
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Farmville has introduced the unwither ring on valentines’ day. If you give Farmville unwither ring to anyone, there crops will never wither. You better give it to someone special to show your love for them. This is the best thing to give your Farmville addict girlfriend or boyfriend on valentines’ day. It will never wither, nor will their crops.

It seems like Farmville wants some serious business now, with virtual goods because unwither ring is priced 250 Farm Cash. So, naturally, those who want to gift the unwither ring to their special someone will have to pay and get the farm cash before they can purchase unwither ring. It’s not for everyone, just for addicts perhaps.

Farmville Unwither Ring

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Farmville Valentine’s Day Farm Decorating Contest

On February 8, 2010, in Games, by TechAdmin
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Farmville Valentine's Day ContestWith Farmville Valentine’s Day decoration contest, you can get a chance to win 500 Farm Cash and 500,000 coins. To participate in the contest, you have to submit the photos of your Valentines themed farms. Submission has started from Feb 04, 2010 and will be accepted up till Feb 14, 2010. After that, Farmville team will be choosing contest winners who will receive lucrative rewards in form of coins and farm cash. There will be 10 best farms receiving such rewards, selected on criteria of originality, effort and presentation. So, obviously, photoshoped and edited images will not be accepted.

To keep the process further transparent, winners will have to prove that they actually owed the farms they sent in as submissions. This will be done by validating farms against users’ Facebook IDs, so don’t post images of your neighbors’ farms as this will be useless. Furthere details of the contest and rules can be seen here.

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Play Farmville on MSN Games

On February 4, 2010, in Games, by TechAdmin
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Farmville on MSN GamesHey Farmers, you can now play Farmville on MSN Games. Thanks to the partnership between Zynga and Microsoft, the popular Facebook game, Farmville, will now be featured on MSN’s gaming portal. This is the first time that any of Facebook games is appearing on any other website. Earlier in November, Farmville had introduced a separate website Farmville.com, dedicated to the game that has nearly 75 million active users on Facebook. Zynga has been emphasizing to make all of its popular games “platform independent”. It will however pose serious challenges for Zynga to involve users outside Facebook and make the games as enjoyable as they are while playing on social networks. As the current structure of Facebook games is, users tend to share news and exchange gifts and goodies with their friends on Facebook. That’s why Zynga is sticking with Facebook Connect, at least for now. Whether on Farmville.com or on MSN Gaming Zone, you have to connect using Facebook Connect. No separate login is added at the moment.

Its great news to be able to play Farmville on MSN Game Zone but one disappointing fact is that it works only on Internet Explorer and Firefox. So, the users of Safari and Chrome will be hugely disappointed but that’s how Microsoft Game Zone works. Farmville could really boost Microsoft’s online gaming portal so the guys at MSN look very excited with Zynga deal. MSN Game Zone’s homepage is especially themed to introduce Farmville to gamers. Zynga also has plans to bring more games to MSN; Mafia Wars could be the next addition or it could either be Fishville or Petville. It’s still not clear though.

Microsoft is also planning to take some of the games to Windows Live Messenger. That’s going to be very interesting, to play Farmville on Windows Live Messenger while chatting with your contacts online. Partnership of Microsoft and Zynga could really bring some exciting prospects to the life. But for now, enjoy playing Farmville on MSN Game Zone!

MSN Games Homepage

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How to Construct Stable for Horses in Farmville

On February 3, 2010, in Games, by TechAdmin
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Farmville StablesHorses at Farmville now have a place to live in. Farmville has just announced stables for horses and have also introduced new horses in the farm. So, all horse lovers at Farmville should be delighted as they have now got a great new place for their horses and also more variety of their favorite Farmville animal. Building stable in Farmville is somehow tricky, you should follow the process given below:

  1. Select Horse Stable from Farmville Market
  2. Place the foundation where you want it in your Farm

Once you lay the foundation, you can click on it and select “Look Inside”. It shows you what you need next to complete your stable. It takes 10 bricks to complete the stable, you will already have one after you lay the foundation. So, next you need:

  1. 9 additional bricks to complete the stable, you can get them:
    1. Purchase from Market, 1 Farm Cash per item
    2. Ask for help from your friends to receive free gifts, each of your friends who helps you gets 100 coins as reward

When you have added 25 items to your stable, it shows a pop up to post a feed on wall. 10 of your neighbors, who first click on that feed, receive random items for their stables.

You receive a grey horse when your stable construction is complete, you can share the news with feed on the wall. 5 of your neighbors, who first click, also get a free grey horse for their farm.

Once your stable is complete, you can keep up to 20 horses in it, and can collect from them in 24 hours. Grey horse yields 84 coins and harvests in 3 days. Happy Farming!

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