Happy Mother’s Day Everyone!

Even though I’m pretty sure most of ‘us’ aren’t parents, happy Mother’s Day! I still have homework to do (Procrastinating on my part) and I’m pretty sure we’re going out to dinner later, but… yeah.  

I played Just Dance 2 last night. It’s awesome and addictive, except you get tired easily and the buyable content (like actual songs that are relevant) is expensive… 3 dollars a song. Okay, so it’s 300 WiiPoints, but it loosely converts to 3 dollars. There are three songs I want (Crying Blood by VV Brown, Nine in the Afternoon by Panic! at the Disco, and American Boy by Estelle/Kanye West), so that would cost 9 dollars in WiiPoints, and that’s ridiculous. Besides, I’d have leftover WiiPoints for 3 times because they only sell them in groups of 2000. So EA, you’re less of a concern on my ‘stupid video game company’ list right now.

And today is YoVille’s 3rd anniversary. It’s a Facebook game that’s like what The Sims online would be like, I guess. I used to play it before I had the Sims. But yeah, they usually have a lot of good stuff on ‘sale’ so I’ll be on that for a little.

Zynga

FarmVille has gotten a bit more interesting. They have events with achievements that can be completed quickly, and they have interesting themed stuff. Like they had Valentine’s Day mission during February, Spring missions during March and so on. They had a special Donate to Japan event thing which if you spent 25 Farm Cash (Their premium currency), they’d donate it all to Japanese Relief Groups, and you got a special crop. Don’t worry, they give you 1 free Farm Cash every time you level up, so I didn’t have to actually spend any of my own money to donate. But yeah, Zynga, their parent company, got yelled at last year for not donating the amount they promised to donate to Haiti, so I was kind of suspicious of donating, but since I wasn’t really spending the money, I thought ‘hey, why not’.

They have a new English Farm feature which gives you a second farm in ‘England’. But you need at least 4 friends to activate it and I have like 2 friends that actually play FarmVille, so yeah. I’m not gonna make fake accounts because that’s just sad, and I have a feeling FarmVille will change it in a few months so anyone above a certain level can play.

And YoVille has gotten increasingly worse. The items are more and more expensive and it’s never been popular. The graphics kind of suck. It’s like if the Sims was online. I remember how there used to be a social aspect to YoVille but now it’s just ‘go to the factory, get paycheck, log off’.

Zynga in general has a new reward feature which if you play a lot, you can get specific rewards via reward points. So far, the YoVille section of the website looks lacking, but the FarmVille one is promising. It’s still in BETA mode, though, so it’s probably gonna get revamped over time.

Helium Cartoon Characters in the Sky!

I still need title ideas. :P Hi everyone! How was your Wednesday? Mine went well. The Practice SATs were a nice way to not have my day ruined by jerks lol :P.

I have to rake leaves today –_– and then I have to do my homework. But maybe I’ll get some simming done? I want to play Wii Sports this break, but I also want to write some legacy chapters. 

YoVille and FarmVille are impressing me. YoVille has added levels after 50, and Farmville has a new and organized market, as well as an innovative tree mastery system. Good job, Zynga!

Happy Day-Before-Thanksgiving! If you want to help those in need this holiday weekend, here are some links you could click, and some rich people donate to those causes based on clicks:

• The Animal Rescue Site
• Ripple
• Free Rice
• Games that Give
• Free Flour
• Free Poverty
• Give Vaccines
• Aid to Children
• Good Search
• Chintai- Click the Cup
• Barking Mad
• Free Kibble
• Free Kibble Kat
• Care2

So go find your inner philanthropist and click! :)

Of Course It Is

Apparently, Zynga believe September is when all of us hardworking YoVille-ers should be appreciated. Somebody clearly went a little loony with power over there, seeing as they admitted that us players deserve credit for putting up with their crap. It’s not as bad as EA, but still. Zynga should be rich enough from FarmVille, so they should leave YoVille alone. Or at least clean it up.

YoVille is honestly… messed up now. Small crud like stuffed animals(Which don’t even go with the art style of the rest of the items, by the way) cost YoCash, AKA real world money. And it used to be fun to talk with others, or play tic-tac-toe. Now, it’s turning into a hook up game. And a lot of the YoVille clothes and hairstyles, not to mention, players, resemble guidos and guidettes from the Jersey Shore. There was a time when the clothes and furniture was realistic. Now it’s just one cheap gimmick after another.

I’ll post updates if anything interesting pops up on YoVille.

EA, You Might Want to Watch Out

We all have heard of the horror that is known as EA; charging loyal customers for pixels, glitches, and then banning them later, after they’re done using a user long enough. But another company might start replacing EA in Internet frugality- Zynga.

Yes, Zynga. The company that makes highly addictive games for Facebook and other social networking websites. There games require patience for loading, friends for gifting, and a huuuge wallet.

Today, in YoVille, the Sims-esque Zynga Game, was the game’s anniversary. To ‘celebrate’ it, they had a bunch of special items on ‘sale’.

Yeah, on sale for who? If you could see the pictures clearly, you could see bathtubs for 8 and 9 YoCash, the YoVille currency. Chairs are also 7 and 8 YoCash. And the price changes on COLOR. So they purposely put somewhat crappy shades of everything for cheaper prices, than bright, better looking colors cost more. :/ Sure, 25 coins doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you’re designing an entire room, you have to wait like a month to save up.

And here are some more screenshots.

A HELICOPTER FOR 100 YOCASH? A CAROUSEL HORSE FOR 25? And I don’t even know what the last item is!

And some rather expensive plush collectables too.

And here’s what I mean for the whole ‘25 extra coins per item in a set is really inconvenient’. I had a choice of making my diner red, blue, pink or purple. I was initially going to do it blue, but seeing as it was a really boring shade to me, I had to wait longer(This set was available in November ‘09) to make my diner.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an alright game. Sure, the last two months of themes really sucked, with Whimsical and Enchanted Land, which ended in identical items, but I’ve managed to save a lot of coins by not buying anything at all, but really Zynga. This is a FREE game. You shouldn’t have to go so low to steal money from people who care about your game so much.