Cake Jailbreak Gifting Event

Share:

What do Prized Pigs, Presidential Masks, Military Uniforms, Calling Card and Cake have in common?  Say it isn't so but just when you thought a break was in order from these crazy gifting events, another one is upon us. I told you yesterday that today was the last day of the Serial Assassins. There are 2 hours left and Customer Support has already added the 411 Page for the Cake Jailbreak Gifting Event.  Cakes are what we will be passing around this time.  In addition to Customer Support, the Official Mafia Wars Blog has also posted information about this event which is "Coming Our Way Soon".  This one is just like the last one so there is no need to go into all the details.

Bossy Don posted images of the the loot items we will be rewarded with on the The Zynga Forum Boards.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Create Your Own Bit.ly Account for The Link-a-Nator

Share:

Yesterday I told you about a cool update to the Link-a-Nator (1) involving different options to get your links shortened for easier posting.  If you listen to Episode 15 of the The Informant Podcast, Pistol Pete discusses this addition.  Eike Meier, who contributes to some of the Spockholm scripts wrote an excellent note outlining what the bit.ly option and what it can do for you.  Remember choosing this option requires that you have your own bit.ly account.  This is an advantage to the tiny.url links because you will be able to track how many clicks you get and it will reduce the number of tiny urls created and thus errors when the cap is met and the links get compromised.

Here is the note written by Eike which explains the process.  I added a few comments from trying it out myself. I enclosed my comments in brackets [].

1.  Go to  http://bit.ly/ and click "Sign Up".

2.  Enter your email-adress, desired username and password.

3.  Login and go to page http://bit.ly/a/your_api_key/ and copy your api-key.

[If you forget this link or don't want to come back to this note, there is a link for it right on The Link-a-Nator.  You will only need to do the step above once because the Link-a-Nator will remember your API Key for you.]

4.  Open the Link-a-nator, select "bit.ly" and enter your username and API-key (not password!) into the fields. They will be automatically saved for the next runs.

5.  Run the Link-a-nator as usual and publish your links (image added to the note.  For those of you have asked me how to publish the links to your wall, take note of the big "Publish to Wall" button.)

6.  If you now login into your bit.ly account, you can see the list of links and number of clicks.  Now, finding out which gift link belongs to which gift is a bit luck - mouseover the link and if you're lucky, you can see the name of the gift link this:

[I also found it cool that you could see the data outlined in other ways as well.]

This works better in FF than chrome.
Have fun!

PS. I've made a small bookmarklet to include the name of the gift visibly into the page like that

Copy the script below and paste it into your browser.

javascript:(function(){ var boxes%3Ddocument.getElementsByClassName('resultsItemContainer');for(i%3D0,j%3Dboxes.length;i<j;i%2B%2B){if (m%3D/ztrack_subcategory\%3D\d%2B_([^\%26]%2B)\%26/.exec(boxes[i].innerHTML)){var name%3Dm[1];var box%3Dboxes[i].getElementsByClassName('long_url_display_more')[0]; var newItem%3D'
'%2Bm[1]%2B'
'; $(box).append(newItem); }}})()

Many thanks to Eike for taking the time to write this so us computer not so smart people can understand what the bit.ly update is all about.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Mafia Wars Players For Charity

Share:

Mafia Wars Players For Charity is a group dedicated to holiday spirit and giving back.  I'm very proud to be a part of this and The Informant Podcast is one of the sponsors.  I've always suggested to players asking me about joining families (AKA Clans) to participate in a Mock War to get a feel of what it's like.  This is a great opportunity and it's for a very great cause.  I think those that have taken the time to put this event together and hope you all can make it.  All the details are below.
(Reprinted from the informantpodcast.com, posted by Mike Nestor)

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=176518699030692

We will be holding what looks like it will be the largest mock war in the history of Mafia Wars with 100% of the proceeds going directly to charity.

We are asking that you all please join us in this event and have some fun icing each other for a great cause.
Lets show the world all of Mafia Wars we really care.
…
“Mafia Wars Player’s For Charity”
December 10th 2010 -6 PM EST / 3 PM PST – December 12th 2010 10 PM EST / 7 PM PST
Benefiting St. Jude’s Children Hospital & The Wounded Warrior Project

$2.00 Minimum Donation per Person to fight all weekend. (Feel Free To Donate More If You Can)
Lots of Great Prizes – Mafia Wars Gift Cards , Lotto Sets, High End Loot From Vegas- Bankok & Moscow, Mafia Wars Hats & T-Shirts and much much more.

Come Show the world that Mafia Wars Players Truly Care and are doing our part to make the world a better place.

Please fill out this request to join sheet and it has the link to make the donations and register for the event  HERE

Want to come play then Contact Us on Facebook

by requesting to join the group HERE

Sponsored In Part by

The Facebook & Zynga Podcast

The Informant Podcast

and The Pinnacle War Page

If you still have questions or want to share this event with others who may not be as into Mafia Wars as much as you are, John Sweeney Jr. has done a nice job of outlining the details and explaining the event in his article for the Tampa Social Media Examiner.  

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Let The Voting Begin

Share:

The deadline has been be passed and all entries for the Dish It Out and Win Contest have been submitted.

We all get 3 votes for the top 3 of the 11 dishes that were submitted. Click HERE to vote now!  I submitted an entry called Spaghetti and Nerf Balls but I want you all to vote for the 3 best dishes.  Mine was a joke so if you like funny then I won't try to stop you.  I would like to have a Mafia Wars jacket.  Da Irish Kid has one so if I got one too then maybe he would stop bragging about it!

Blue Eyed Nate removed his submission because he isn't eligible to win and thinks he would blow the competition away.  Here is one last look at his Pignata inspired self proclaimed master piece.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Cyber Monday

Share:

The people at Mafia Wars are honoring Cyber Monday.  The Monday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday was dubbed Cyber Monday five years ago and was an attempt to get consumers to shop on-line.  It seems that The Mafia Wars Fan Page will use any excuse to give us one free Reward Point.  Yes, we all thought they were finished with that yesterday.  Here is the link yo get your special Cyber Monday Reward Point.

http://zyn.ga/1nk

In celebration of this Cyber Monday, they have added 4 new Limited Edition loot items to The Marketplace. Today is the last day for The Black Friday Raid and it seems these new items are an after thought.

There are 4 Autumn themed items.  It's funny because in the US and I think other countries with seasons, Autumn represents the transition into Winter and it's time frame is calculated based on the Sun's proximity to the equator.  This season is also called Fall because that's when all the leaves fall off the trees.  Autumn usually starts in September and is over by early November.  They are a bit late to be busting out Autumn themed items. Ask Da Irish Kid, as he has been dealing with snow already!  I think the people in the Art Department worked hard on these items and nobody had bothered to release them in a timely fashion. Somebody must have complained and the powers that be at Zynga must have felt bad and decided to throw them in on the last day of the Black Friday Raid.  Here they all are and if you get them today, they will be 42% off the regular price of 35 Reward Points.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Serial Assassins Gifting Event Ends Tomorrow

Share:

Tomorrow is the last day of The Serial Assassins gifting event.  Remember you can master the event 3 times so if you haven't don so already, now is the time to work on it.  Don't ignore your Calling Cards because once this event expires at 11:59 pm/PST, they will turn into Mystery Bags!

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Spock On!

Share:

There is a new option to get answers from the guys at Team Spockholm.

This site is very similar to Zynga's Get Satisfaction. If you have an idea, question, bug to report or just want to say thank you, go  to http://spockholm.userecho.com.

The sign up process is very easy and only takes a few seconds.

If you don't want to participate, you will most likely find solutions to your problems here. This site is for all Mafia Wars players and brings all the questions to one location.  Many sites are constantly presented with the same questions and problems involving bookmarklets over and over again. I know I get in box messages all the time and I'm not even an expert.  From now on, I will be referring all players who have bookmarklet issues to this site. I will also tell them to Spock On!

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Game Errors and Customer Service

Share:

It's been 10 days since I wrote about the annoying 2X Mastery Boost error that we all get when trying to accept 2X Mastery Boosts (1).

Since this has been broken for so long, I'm not sure why we still get the annoying option to send them to our mafia while doing jobs.  It's bad enough we have to deal with Secret Stash, Mystery bags and all the other pop-ups that disrupt the flow when doing jobs.  This is one that should be eliminated until they can fix the problem.

If you are really irritated that you can't accept your 2X Mastery Boosts, here is a work around discovered by one of my mafia members.  Lamar has some free time on his hands so he contacted Customer Support to launch a complaint.  It's a little known secret that if you have good complaining skills and your Customer Support agent is in a giving mood that you can get compensated with all kinds of stuff.  Lamar was able to talk his Customer Support agent into giving him 70 2X Mastery Boosts!

If you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes when Customer Support is doing something to your account, he is an image Lamar was able to capture during the time that the 2X Mastery Boosts were being credited to his account.

Remember the Portable Road Block that had everybody wondering what in the heck it was?(1)  Turns out these were added by a Customer Support agent to my mafia members account.

Kassem was annoyed because some jackass in his mafia had sent him 5,000 Road Blocks and he decided to complaint about it.  He was given 50 Portable Road Blocks for his troubles.

I'm all in favor for being compensated when there is a problem.  Because the 2X Mastery Boost is an error common to all players, I think every account should be compensated and we shouldn't have to ask for it.  Those who take the extra time to complain when they have an issue should be creative as you never know what you could get.  There are many players out there who get energy refills, stamina refills and Reward Points because they report their issues.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Link-a-Nator Update

Share:

Those of us who use the Link-a-Nator everyday to post free gift links to our walls know that there was a problem awhile back with the tinyurls.  So many were using the Link-a-Nator that the daily quotas were being reached for the tinyurl service.  The always innovative Team Spockholm, worked around this problem by offering their own tinyurl service.  The latest update lets us choose which url shortening service we want to use.  The bit.ly service has now been added to the mix.

To select which service you want (or none at all if you want to post the longer links), simply check the option now included on the Link-a-Nator.

If you haven't used this tool yet, click HERE for instructions and HERE for the most recent updates.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

40% Discount Gone But Not Forgotten

Share:

If you're like me and you procrastinate than you won't be happy when you go to the Marketplace and buy your Reward Points at 40% off.  The discount is no longer there.  You would think that it would've stayed until The Black Friday Raid was over.  I wish they would define what a limited time is. I thought I had all weekend and was sadly mistaken.  The moral of the story is to buy discounted Reward Points ASAP and use Weapons Depot timer speed ups even faster.  The rule of thumb seems to be that anything you think is a good thing will probably be gone before you can say "I like that!".

My Marketplace purchase meter was one away from being filled up so I jumped on my last purchase.  At least I got the Berserker before the take that option away without notice.  I even decided to brag about this!  I'd much rather be kicking ass with all the skill points I bought with Weapons Depot timer speed ups!  Ok, I'll stop referencing that.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Last Free Reward Point

Share:

This is the last day to collect a free Reward Point from The Mafia Wars Fan Page.  They add a link that says "Check out the great things you can get." to the notification.  I looked and there wasn't anything for 1 Reward Point.  I could have bought 1/6th of a Weapons Depot timer speed up.  Now I can only buy 1/12th of one.  There is nothing to complain about getting a free Reward Point and I hope they do this more often.

http://zyn.ga/1jD

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Scan For Specific Missions

Share:

When the Mission Collection was first added to the game, I showed you how to use Stream Helper by Team Spockholm to scan for missions and select the ones you wanted to participate it (1).  Team Spockholm has just made that task a lot easier by adding a menu so Stream Helper will only search for the missions that you want to do.  Simply check the missions box and a menu will drop and select the mission you want to do.  They even added the collection piece next to the mission name in case you forgot which  mission offers what piece.

There is also an option to look for Mission Rewards in your news feeds. This is nice but the problem is most of the rewards are already taken by the time you get to them.

In both of these cases, you still have to manually go to the link to get the job(s) done.  When Stream Helper is finished scanning, click on the yellow "Mission" or "Mission Rewards" and the links will appear.

I still need a Sniper Scope so I selected the mission Bribe a Contract and went back 3 hours.  7 of these missions were found.  I was able to get in on 3 of them because the rest were already filled up.

The best part about Zynga adding the addition to allow non-mafia members of the initiator to help is that I can request help for these missions that probably won't go anywhere unless I do.  Arun has updated Mission Owner to supply the link I need to post in my new feeds.  Use the Mission Owner bookmarklet and look for the Mission Invite Link.

Right click on this link and select Copy link address or Copy link location depending on what browser you are using.

Normally you could just copy this link on your Facebook profile page but Facbook isn't liking long links right now.  Your options are to make a post and paste the long link into a comment or go to a small link generating service and convert it.  I used tinyurl.com and made my large links small by pasting the link into

I posted the three mission invites to my wall and within minutes all 3 of my missions were complete.

I was excited to collect my rewards but I didn't have any luck.  There was no Sniper Scope in sight and all I got was a bunch of crap.

If you don't want to go through all of this than there is still hope.  Tarra, one of my readers, sent me the image below.  She got a Sniper Scope from the Daily Take.

For instructions on using Stream Helper (1)  and Mission Owner (1), click the links.  If you don't want to use bookmarklets but would like to have your mafia help you with uncompleted missions not managed properly by others, I have outlined a way to do that manually (1).

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law