Mafia Wars by Zynga (Facebook) Part - II

In my last post, I had mentioned the basics of the game, how to start from the beginning and all that. In this post, I am going to go a bit deeper.

First of all, I would like to mention that Mafia wars is not a male-dominated game at all. It might seems to be like that because of its name, but it is not. Out the the 4700+ friends that I have on Facebook (all for Mafia Wars), I think almost 40% of them are females, if not more.

Coming back to the topic, I had mentioned that MW requires a bit of strategy. The strategy here is the timing strategy. There's a thing known as "Energy Pack" which boosts the energy by 25%, and is available once in 24 hours. Using this Energy Pack at the right moment is very important. Further, the timing of the job help requests from friends is also crucial in fast leveling up.



Zynga is trying to incorporate many new and interesting things in the game. They are including special edition jobs, collections and loots. Recently, there were the Easter and St. Patrick's special edition jobs and collection. These kind of inclusions increases the interest a lot more and removes any boredom that creeps in.

Apart from the official Zynga features, there are many unofficial things related to Mafia wars. Two such things are clans and trading groups. Clans are like families. Being a member of any clan has many advantages like backup and protection against bullies, help in completing collections etc.  As you can see in the picture, I am a member of {A4L} clan. Trading groups are for trading loots and items with others. This can be real fun if you can get a hold of it, and understand it properly. But be aware of scammers. I was the admin of a trading page, namely MWTC, for quite a few months, but due to some unavoidable circumstances, I had to leave the group.

Nothing is perfect in this world, and one thing which I hate the most about MW are the bugs and errors. Every now and then a new bug pops up...links don't work as they should...and so on. There were many times when MW was down....maintenance problem. But if you can bear with these issues, then you would just love the game...its so addictive. But, addiction is not good for people like me, the college students. Where's the time to study???????? :-P
And by the way, don't forget to check out ZuneZach's 100th blog post celebration.

Mafia Wars by Zynga (Facebook) - Part I

Finally I have managed to complete the writing, in spite of frequent power failures. After I messed up with my previous blog, I started playing this game on Facebook, and very soon I got addicted to it. So I was thinking of writing this post for quite a few days, even though this one will be a bit off-topic. This is a small review of the game Mafia Wars by Zynga, on Facebook. I have been playing that game for almost some months now, and the following are my views about the game.

To start with, all Zynga games are very popular, be it the poker, or the farmville, fishville, cafeworld etc. And so, Mafia Wars, aka MW, is no exception. 

I don't know why, but I had the feeling that Farmville requires a lot of work, specially after crossing level 30, I mean ploughing and harvesting requires a lot of clicking....on the other hand, MW is more about strategy and less about clicking. Yes, even though its only "click-click", it requires a lot of strategy in MW. 

To begin with, you have to choose your type, ie, Maniac( regenerate energy faster),  Mogul (regenerate money faster), and Fearless (regenerate stamina faster). Now what are these energy, stamina etc? These are the attributes that each player has.There are 5 attributes in total -- (a) Attack skill (b) Defense skill (c) Health (d) Energy - required to do jobs (e) Stamina - required to fight and rob.

There are 4 regions in the game (more to come in the future), namely New York, Bangkok, Cuba and Moscow. In the beginning, only NY and Bangkok will be unlocked. Cuba will unlock at level 35 while Moscow at 70. 

You will have to do some very simple jobs in the beginning. Other tabs like "Fight" and "Properties" will be locked now. The jobs are divided into different tiers. Each tier has got about 7 to 8 jobs, and each job has 3 mastery levels (4 for Bangkok). You will get experience points by doing jobs, which in turn will help you to level up. Given the number of experience points required  to level up at the beginning, it is easy to reach  level 20 on the very first day.

The most important thing about MW is your mafia strength, which means, the total number of other FB users who are your friends and also in your mafia. The maximum strength allowed is 501, but it is better to have much more than that. This is required in fights. Items will be used in fights. There are 3 categories of items, namely, weapons, armors and vehicles. Each member of your mafia will use 1 weapon, 1 armor and 1 vehicle. So its better to be a full strength (501) as soon as possible. 

Apart from fighting, Zynga has brought back robbing. You will need to rob the properties of other people. 

In the properties tab (NY) and Business tab (other 3 regions). you will need to collect money from them.

The inventory is the place where you can buy items required for doing the jobs, to store the items you have looted from jobs and fights and also to check your collections. To talk about collections, each regions has got different collection sets each of 7 items. you need to collect all the 7 items in order to vault the set and receive a bonus. No worries if you don't get any item...you can always ask your mafia to help you out with this. And that's what the wishlist is made for. 

Okay...so enough for now, I will continue this in my next post. Till then, I would like to know if anyone here plays MW? Your views and comments would be nice. Have a great time blogging. And a reply to the question in my previous post would be very much appreciated.