A little less than a year ago, I wrote a post detailing the benefits of using Virtual Gift Cards to buy Reward Points (1). In addition to always getting them at a 40% discount over what you would from buying them in the Marketplace, you also got more Loyalty Points and bonus loot items (1). Today, if you go to http://www.zynga.com/gamecards/info/ in hopes of purchasing a Virtual Gift Card you will be told that they are temporarily unavailable. It's been this way for well over a six weeks. Maybe Facebook doesn't like Zynga selling Reward Points without them.
I'm a little annoyed because I'm low on Reward Points and have been waiting for the ever present 40% offer. I must get 5 to 10 of those popups a day when I have plenty of Reward Points on hand. Once I get low, the offers seem to dry up. Since I don't have the Virtual Card option, I have to wait it out.
Mike Nestor found another option to purchase Game Cards on line. You can buy them from Walmart in $50, $25 and $10 dollar increments. Go here to check it out.
He tested out a $10 dollar card and got 60 Reward Points. Once the purchase was made, it took 25 minutes to get the code.
Instead of a cool loot item, he got 5 Ruthless boosts. Now that is Ruthless!
I guess it's better than the Boulder Breaker which has stats of 37/73 and is way outdated but a nice loot item would be more incentive than some boosts.
Doing the math, you can see that purchasing on-line Virtual Cards from WalMart yields you 30% more Reward Points than when they are full price in the Marketplace. The Bonus Gift shouldn't really factor into your decision.
It's still best to buy Reward Points from the Marketplace when there is a 40% offer. In a case like mine where no offer seems to be coming anytime soon, 30% sounds like a good compromise over breaking down and buying them at full price.
You can also buy Game Cards from bestbuy.com but you have to wait for them to ship the actual card to your house which will take a few days. Last time I tested these, you only got 42 Reward Points for $10 and it wasn't a good deal.
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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. |
The absence of this option has been very annoying to me too as this is my preferred method of purchase.. Thanks for bringing attention to this!
ReplyDeleteThe cards from Best Buy are now 60 RP's per $10 card.
ReplyDeleteyou should really check out the Vision Racer
ReplyDelete