They instituted a ~throttle~ and a limit so that now one can only collect items from the feeds very very s l o w l y ….and only when Zynga wants to let you. If their little program decides that you’re having too much fun, they smack you down with a ‘go away you greedy little brat – come back in an hour and try again.’

Which is of course now what it actually says … but that’s what they mean. They took all the social out of social gaming – and now, with their damned ridiculous pause, which they supposedly instituted because THEY believe we’re all too slow to manage 2 whole farms at once and might be upset if something wilts.

So – even though we COULD possibly go entertain ourselves on our farms when we are throttled, there is no point.

I’m not surprised that their numbers went up a bit when EC first came out – novelty does that – but it will not last, and in fact, between the throttle, pause, and absolutely atrocious disregard and disrespect for the people that pay their bills… well, USED to pay their bills, since most of us have throttled & paused our wallets as a result of their incompetence…. I figure that someone inside Zynga is actually working for some other company and sabotaguing them… can’t come up with any other reasonable explanation for why they are choosing to kill off their own success… but there you have it.

Each of the “official feedback threads” for these issues are very, very long… with thousands of messages…. and I’m sure that those represent only a small percentage of irritated ex-farmers. Someone should do an actual story…. would love to know the real story about why they’ve decided that we’re all idiots and will keep playing – and paying – once they’ve taken all the fun out of the game.

If Zynga doesn’t do something soon, they will lose ALOT of customers… but with their lack of customer service – it begs the question, do they really care????

An overwhelming amount of players have voiced their opinions on the “Pause” feature in the game so that only one of your two farms is active at a time. Since I visit the forums regularly, I can say the feedback is extremely negative. Some 7,000+ comments and counting have been left in protest of the pause. There’s been no word from Zynga or any representative on the issue since it’s release. Their only response was move thread between categories so players could not find it.

It’s become clear to me that Zynga either..

A. Hears the feedback but is turning a deaf ear to it.

B. Hears the feedback but does not have the developers capable of fixing the pause feature now that the game has been released.

C. Hears the feedback and is just hoping people will once again cave and decide to play anyway.

I think the best thing and probably what should have been done in the first place is there should have been a choice, pause or not pause in the game. Anyone who has played this game knows what they can handle and will do on the game. If someone can’t handle 2 farms let them be able to pause it, if they can let them not have to. I for one, refuse to play EC until the pause is made an option and not a requirement.

We were promised a 2nd farm, this is not a second farm it is an alternate farm. You may entice new players and maybe get some players to return, but they will not stay. The pause is the most frustrating “feature” introduced into this game in all the time I’ve been playing, and there have been many frustrations, but this is the final straw.

Players have been posting feedback on Zynga’s forum for 6 days vehemently opposing the “pause”. Over 8,000 comments by players and in 6 days not a word from Zynga, not a word!!! They asked for feedback and not a word in response… extremely poor customer relations.

I for one have thrown in the towel… there are so many issues with that game, Zynga is like a dictator more so than a service provider… Bye Bye Zynga, you can keep you’re alternate farm!

Number 1
Farmville is a goal oriented game. There are crop, tree and craft masteries, collectibles, ribbons. Until recently they had no quests or missions. Zynga has several mission driven games. If we wanted to play them we would. We play Farmville because we want to control how we play the game within the parameters of the goals.

Number 2
EC has turned what was a fun social game of sharing iems and gifts into a game of spamming friends constantly for items.

Number 3
The decline in player numbers may have something to do with boredom, but probably has more to do with the glitches and bugs that permeate the game, the constant pop-ups to share or request items, the additions to the game that are time consuming enough without the bugs and pop-ups.

Also the development team has a serious lack of imagination. They produce new things that are a old thing just a differnt color.

Zynga has a terrible customer service issue. There are constant complaints among farmville players of not getting responses to tickets.

Zynga is not responsive to player feedback. They have forums for such and rarely are items addressed or resolved.

Number 4
The only truly new thing on EC is the sheep barn and sheep breeding. Most of the buildings are slight reworks of the old builds with the same function. There is a crafting cottage but it works the same way the others do.

I do wonder though if Ms Castillo really researched this by playing the game or talking with a cross section of farmville players or just quoted extensively from a farmville press release. I read two articles yesterday on line ahich sounded remarkably like this article. Those articles were titled “English Countryside How Pause Saved Farmville” attributed to 2 other authors.

Furthermore, Zynga has many issues with it’s game.

1. We have had our hands slapped for collecting to many items off the news feed so now we are only allowed to collect 125 items per day. Holy Cow! With all the items we need to build all these structures on both farms now it will take forever to collect enough items. And you might as well forget about doing the expansions to the buildings when you do have them built.

2. Dedicated farmers that have reached level 100 no longer have the privelage to get one free farm cash each time they level up. Boy oh boy! What a slap in the face there. I’m dedicated to zynga and farmville so I get nothing from them. Huh! Makes a whole lot of sense huh?

3. The glitches in the game are absolutely ridiculous. Oh but bear with them. They will fix it. WHEN???? They are the slowest moving people I have ever seen when it comes to fixing things.

I could keep going on, but I would end up with arthritis by the time I am done. If you really want to see all the problems and issues then go to Zynga’s farmville forums and read all about it. We all know they don’t. Otherwise they would fix the issues. MAYBE!

Please respond to us, your customers.

without customers, you are not a company.

Castillo has committed a hasty generalization fallacy here in the 2nd paragraph 3. “Let’s be clear: This is not a separate entity, but an expansion of the original game.” From all aspects it is not an expansion but a seperate game as players are forced to abandon one game for another.

Paragraph 4 “Arnold estimates it will take most players a couple of weeks before they’ll touch English soil.” Another fallacy there, authoritarian fallacy this time. It will take forever to get everyone there as there are those who will refuse to even do the quest to get to the English countryside. I for one refuse to touch it and will not accept any requests from it.

Again check your facts carefully. Another fallacy committed here. “The English Countryside expansion seems to be driving players back to the game, however.” It’s actually driving people away from the game in bigger droves than before. “. Those who quit will stay away when they hear of the pause.
And over here “They want to keep the game fun and social so you’ll keep playing.” Actually they made the game so annoying many have decided to quit and refused to stop playing. Another big boo boo there.

All in all, your article is full of fallacies and contains bias towards zynga and does not reflect the true situation. I see careful bias by omitting several key important facts and slants to try to change the view of the entire issue in Zynga’s favor