The State of Gifting

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On November 10th , Zynga told us all about "enhanced" gifting. They told us that gifts from the Facebook side would eventually go away (1). Below is exactly what they said.

A Note About Mafia Wars Requests on the Facebook Game Requests Page
The enhancements above were made possible by shifting the handling of Mafia Wars requests to be entirely in-game. Another change that results from this is in the behavior of Mafia Wars requests on the Facebook Game Requests page. Before, you were able to accept Mafia Wars requests on that page. Now, the "Accept" buttons bring you into the game, where you can accept all gifts, etc. in the ZMC. Also of note, handling requests entirely in our system means the error codes KE-29, AF-77, and MC-24 sometimes encountered when accepting gifts through the Facebook Game Request page will cease to be problem! These error messages will become a thing of the past once all old requests are cleared out, which should happen within approximately 30 days.


The hidden message we failed to realize at the time is that our precious gifting links would no longer work as these are all created to act like Facebook requests. Now when you click on any gifting link, you get an error pig. For a while, you got the gift anyways but this is no longer the case.

If you try to accept your Facebook Requests, you are directed to your ZMC.

JGrabAllGifts still works but you won't get any gifts out of it. It will tell you that you got the gifts but you really don't. As a tool for Mafia Wars, it's only use now is to clean out your useless Facebook Requests.

Obviously, creating links via the Link-a-Nator is only going to add gift links to the news feeds that don't work. The top half of the tool is still useful as it will generate your personal links that still work.

The Gift-a-Nator isn't going to help you either as it will only open the useless links and you won't get any gifts.

As players, we need to adapt and focus on the ZMC because that is the only way to accept gifts. The main problem with the ZMC is it only holds 100 gifts at a time. Zynga needs to increase this limit so players can keep up with the game.

If your ZMC has 100 gifts and players send you more, the gifts at the bottom are bumped out of the ZMC and rendered useless. In the image below, I have 100 gifts in my ZMC and I outlined the 100th gift.

I sent myself a gift from a different account and that one appears in the first position but my total gift count stays at 100.

I scrolled to the bottom of the ZMC and the last gift before I send the one above has vanished and I will never get to accept it. Hundreds of gifts are now lost to thin air because of this. If we can have a mafia of 501 to make up our equipment scores then why can't we have 501 gifts stay in our ZMC?

If they are going to keep the limit at 100, they should remove some of the useless place holders. My family does a lot of Boss Fights. I don't need 8 spots in my ZMC suggesting I join the Family Boss Fight. If I want to play, I will get there from the Home Page Module or the Boss Tab.

The same applies to new mafia requests. These things don't work half the time and there is an option to accept them all at the same time in the Recruit Page.

This change really impacts players with small mafias. It's going to be more difficult for players to finish gifting events or tasks in Missions. If you have a large mafia, the best strategy for now is to send out as many free gifts as you can and hope you get them in return. There is no limit on how many players you can send a gift to but you can only send 1 to each mafia member every 24 hours. You can only send 50 at a time but may repeat the process for however many are in your mafia. Families should encourage their players to send a free gift to each other everyday. This is easy to do and doesn't take up much time. It's nice that there is a family category on the Gift Send Page so you don't have to search for all your members.

Some gifts don't always appear on the Free Gift Page but you can still get to the Send Page by replacing the XXX with the gift ID to the link below.

http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/track.php?next_controller=freegifts&next_params={%22gift_id%22:XXX}

Mike Nestor made these links so players who still need to upgrade their Chicago Properties can get the parts needed. Just click on the link and send them out and hope your mafia returns them to you. Now that we can return gifts with one or two clicks, you will probably see more returned gifts than in the past.

http://spockon.me/MWLLUnionWorker

http://spockon.me/MWLLCarpenterNails

http://spockon.me/MWLLLathStrips

http://spockon.me/MWLLIronCast

http://spockon.me/MWLLDouglasFirBeams

To ensure you don't lose gifts, it's best to open your gifts in the ZMC a few times a day or when you see you are reaching the limit of 100. The easiest way to do this is to use the ZMC Agent by Team Spockholm. You can find instructions here and the Spockholm Toolbar Import Code is below.

eyJuYW1lIjoiWk1DIiwic3JjIjoiaHR0cDovL3Nwb2NrbGV0LmNvbS9ib29rbWFya2xldC96bWMtYmV0YS5qcyIsInBhZ2UiOiIiLCJhY3RpdmUiOnRydWV9

Once you activate the ZMC Agent, simply drag all your gifts into one of 3 categories. Items you want to open will be opened. Items you want to keep will not be opened or ignored and you can open them at a later time. Items you want to ignore will be cleared from your ZMC. I like to open Harvest Mystery Bags manually so I chose to keep those as well as Battle Requests. I don't care to "open" the Boss Fight notifications or Mafia Wars Invites so I bring those into the ignore box.

When the run was complete, you can see the ZMC Agent did exactly what I told it to do. My Harvest Mystery Bags and Battle Requests were the only things that remained in the ZMC.

Once you have your gifts organized, click the "Start" button and they will be opened, ignored or saved. Here is a run where I opened or ignored everything. When the run is over, the Return Gift requests will show. You want to click these out. You only need to return a gift through a request one time for each of your mafia and you will never have to do it again. Future gifts from a player you sent a return gift to will auto-send a return gift.

Once you click all the return requests, you will see your ZMC Agent processed all of your requests. Do this a few times a day to ensure you won't lose any gifts that your mafia took the time to send you.

Team Spockholm will explore ways to do what they can with what Zynga is allowing us to do in the area of gift sending and accepting. Go to the Spockholm Mafia Tools Fan Page to keep up with their progress. Below are a few messages from the team. Zynga really needs to evaluate their system and allow us to store more gifts in the ZMC. Otherwise there will be too many wasted gift requests.

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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. All material is protected by copyright law