FarmVille Unreleased Button Collection

Thank you to FarmVille Freak Martijn for finding these unreleased button images.

It's been a while since we've seen FarmVille make any updates to the Collectables, now it looks like a new collection is in the works!
FarmVille Button Collection
As always, we cannot guarantee if and when these unreleased items will be released, but it's great to get a sneak peek and hope that they are.

Do you still work towards completing FarmVille Collections? Will new collections encourage you to do so?

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

FarmVille: New Horses, Pony, Foals, Cows and Calf

farmville new horses pony foals cows and calf
In a much anticipated update last night the FarmVille Nursery was upgraded. Farmers now have the ability to produce brand new adult Horses and Cows. Keep in mind if you are lucky enough to produce a new adult animal, you will be able to give away the corresponding calf or foal to your neighbors.

In total, there are 8 new animals that can be produced by or as a bonus of growing up your foals and calves.

Note: When the first enhancement occurred last night, all of the new animals were on the Free Gifting page, but were very quickly taken down. The Groovy Cow was only available for a short period of time through Free Gifting. (More details on that to come)
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

Mafia Wars Mystery Animals: Add more fearsome friends to your arsenal

Mafia Wars just released Mystery Animals that you can send and receive from friends. As you may be aware, animals have recently become increasingly important in everyone's favorite mobbed up Facebook game -- these critters are now part of your arsenal and the stronger the animals you have, the more powerful your family. See how these new Mystery Animals work after the jump. To send Mystery Animals to friends:

Head to the Free Gifts page and send Mystery Animals to your friends. Pretty simple!

mafia wars mystery animal

To snag your own Mystery Animals:

Head to your Facebook wall and when a friend sends you a Mystery Animal, click the Retrieve Mystery Animal button.

mystery animals

That will load the game, and in the homepage, you'll see a small window that says Retrieve animal (this kind of works like the Mystery Bags). Click 'Open It' and...

mafia wars mystery animal

... a pop-up window will let you know which animal you successfully retrieved.



Which Mystery Animals have you received so far? Leave a note in the comments below.
(AND, if you have images of your Mystery Animal, please send them to libe@games.com, and I'll feature them here with your name! Thanks!)

Mafia Wars Mystery Animals: See the complete collection *Spoilers*

The new Mafia Wars Mystery Animal collection will most likely have you hunting down a complete list of critters that can be added to your arsenal. See the entire lineup below. *Spoiler*


King Cheetah (rare)
21 Attack 42 Defense

Arabian Leopard (common)
20 Attack 16 Defense

Kangaroo (uncommon)
30 Attack 29 Defense

Electric Eel (uncommon)
36 Attack 20 Defense




Piranha (uncommon)
23 Attack 35 Defense

Badger (common)
17 Attack 19 Defense

Cassowary (common)
18 Attack 18 Defense

Dingo (common)
13 Attack 24 Defense

Buffalo (common)
25 Attack 12 Defense

Badger (common)
17 Attack 19 Defense

FarmVille iPhone version 1.01 crops up in the App Store

FarmVille for iPhone: You just downloaded it, now it's time to download the 1.01 update, which cropped up in the AppStore over the weekend. This new version doesn't introduce any big new changes to the game, just a handful of tweaks designed to fix some bugs that have been plaguing the portable farm game. You can download this update for your phone by clicking HERE or by visiting the Updates section in the App Store on your iPhone and downloading this patch from there.

Changes in the 1.01 update include the following:

    Fixes to allow farms to load faster
    General fixes to prevent crashes
    Improvements to sending gifts
    Fix for plots that get misaligned after plowing
    Fixes to reduce out of sync issues

YoVille: New Skin Tones, Searchable Inventory and Mystery Deals

Zynga's Platinum Ninja announced that tons of new updates are coming to YoVille this month.

Skin Tones – Also more variety of Skin Tones on their way. So you'll have more choices when changing your appearance!

Searchable Inventory – We've been working on making decorating easier! Soon we'll be coming out with a much simpler way to find all of your prized possessions without having to scroll a ton! Stay tuned for other new ways to manage your inventories and items as well!

Group Buying Coming Back! – That's right folks a new and improved version of Group Buying will be on it's way to YoVille pretty soon. We've made some tweeks to improve this user experience and will be offering you some awesome stuff! Read more about group buying here.

Want to hear about what is coming out this August in YoVille? Of course you do!! Let's check out some awesome things the team is working on to bring you this month.

Mystery Deals – should be coming very very soon! Want to give you all an awesome opportunity to get some of your favorite items at great prices! Check out the Blog on this feature to learn more.

Photo Booth -This awesome item will be coming soon! It will let you take pics and share with your friends. To check out more info on this feature check out here.
YoVille Wave Photo Booth
Busy month for YoVille players! Keep an eye on the Lounge for all the updates

This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.

Cafe World's new decor takes diners to Transylvannia

After last week's Twilight decor, Cafe World has headed outside with new outdoors restaurant decor. It still involves vampires, but it's more traditional, which is to say, totally Transylvannian!

The honor for most expensive item is tied at 60 Cafe Cash for Red Gothic Rooftop and Black Gothic Rooftop. These two are also the most extravagant, transforming your restaurant's roof into a castle that resembles an elegant Gothic cathedral. Premium item runners-up would be the Gothic Spire for 18, and the adorable Happy Vamp Diner Statue for 16 Cafe Cash.

Out of the 22 new decor pieces, 14 require Cafe Cash. If the game didn't make acquiring in-game premium money so simple and often, this would be a problem. Not requiring Cafe Cash, the priciest item is the Gothic Stained Glass in the outdoor Windows category, which costs a whopping 75,000 Coins for one.

You can get a glimpse of all the items in the graphic below.
Cafe World Vampire Outdoor Restaurant Decor

YoVille is giving away two Gold Mystery Boxes this week only

As Platinum Ninja told us before, September marks YoVille's Player Appreciation Month. And to kick off the festivities, Zynga will be randomly giving away Gold Mystery Boxes twice this week, but they're not telling when.

You'll have to log in to the game daily (a chore, we know) to find out exactly when these mysterious goodies will be given away. Obviously, the contents of the boxes are a mystery, but expect lots of coins and YoCash to fill those wallets again after the Labor Day Sale, according to the YoVille blog.

When looking at the success of Zynga's other social games, it's a surprise we haven't seen similar events in FarmVille, Mafia Wars or FrontierVille. Here's to hoping this is the start of a new trend for Zynga!

Tonight's Vampire Wars developer chat will answer your burning questions

If you have nagging questions concerning your favorite fang-filled Facebook game, Vampire Wars, then hang around Zynga's Vampire Wars forum today around 4 PM PDT (that's 7 PM EST for you East Coasters). Zynga's Vlad the Emailer (and hopefully more of the development team) will be answering your burning questions for one hour in a developer's chat.

The team is taking questions right now in preparation for the discussion, so head on over now to get your words in if you won't be able to make it. The forums are heating up with questions already concerning time limits on gameplay and their effect on balance, perceived flaws in the game's combat system and what the team is doing for new players.

All that's well and good, but we just want to know is when will Blade be making an appearance (this is a war, you know). Stay tuned for when we discuss the results of the live developer chat tomorrow.

Mafia Wars 'Declare War' Feature: Everything you need to know

Mafia Wars Declare War
Our favorite mobster RPG game on Facebook, Mafia Wars, is more of a series of skirmishes, fights and robberies than it is a war between mobs. Zynga wants to change this with their updated Declare War feature, which allows players to settle disputes with anyone--rather than stabbing our friends in their backs like before--in timed matches using their Top Mafia members.

Take a look behind the break to learn how to master this updated feature and dominate your turf.
Mafia Wars Top Mafia
First things first, you'll need to be at least Level 8 to have access to this feature, which unlocks the Top Mafia option when looking at the My Mafia page. Top Mafia, first introduced in 2009, is a feature that allows you to choose six of your best mobsters to fill key positions in your mafia for extra bonuses. However, certain positions can only be filled by players with specific character traits, so here's the breakdown:

    Mastermind (more XP from jobs): Any character
    Wheel Man (reduced Energy usage on jobs): Fearless only
    Button Man (increased Attack): Maniac only
    Bodyguard (increased Defense): Any character
    Safecracker (more money from fights): Any character
    Bag Man (more money from jobs): Mogul only



To make sure you have the absolute best Top Mafia, be mindful of your friends' stats when choosing them for one of these six positions. For example, it's best to choose a friend who has completed the most jobs to be your Mastermind as it implies he or she is a high Energy player and will net you a ton more experience. The same idea goes for the rest of these positions; a Maniac in your mafia that has won the most fights would be the best choice for your Button Man, and so on.

After you've chosen your Top Mafia, you can finally declare war on any mafia you would normally fight by going to the Fight page. Next to the option to fight a mafia member should be a button that reads "Declare War." Remember to judge who you're about to declare war on based on their level and mafia size. Clicking the button will automatically take you the war page, though a pop-up will appear suggesting you to ask your friends for help. This is no time to play the lone wolf, so just ask 'em.
Declare War ask for help
You'll now see both yourself, your Top Mafia and the opposing player with his Top Mafia hiding behind silhouettes. To make things a bit more challenging, you'll have 16 hours from the start of the war to wipe out each of your enemy's Top Mafia members and eventually knock out your opponent. To seek out your friends' help, just click the button above your portrait to post a news feed on your wall.

Clicking on any one of the six mystery combatants will result in you either defeating that mafia member or you being defeated. It seems currently that you can only personally attack one Top Mafia opponent before your friend's help out. While this can slow things up rather quickly, if you could just attack every Top Mafia member yourself, that would trivialize the experience to the point where you would be better suited to just fight other mobsters.

Declare Wars Reward
In the middle of the page you'll notice item rewards accompanied by a question mark. These are the rewards that leader of this war will win, with the visible reward being one of the more common and the question mark being a rare reward only to be revealed when the war is won. At the bottom of the screen is the reward that your Top Mafia members will win for helping you if your team should come out victorious. There are 16 rewards in total and if you manage to collect them all from either starting wars or helping your friends out, you'll receive the "Warlord" achievement.

If you'd like to help your friends in war, just look for a post on their Facebook feed to the tune of "Joe Shmoe needs your help in a War." Click through and you'll be taken to their war page where you can attack your friend's opponents. However, there seems to be a potential error in the game currently that when your friend helps one of their friends in a war, you will be asked to help out, which isn't possible. Mafia Wars Maniac claims that this issue is a bug, but it does make sense that you wouldn't be able to help a friend of a friend in a War. Come on, mafias are more cliquey than that.

Now you're ready to hit the battlefield, but remember that can only declare one war at a time and have just one declared on you. Make sure to beef yourself up with some extra weapons, items and friends before going to battle, because this time everything counts.

Zynga Poker VIP Club gives players the true card shark treatment for a very important price

Zynga Poker VIP Club
For the hardcore online poker players, Zynga has introduced the VIP Club in Zynga Poker for players with deep interest in poker and even deeper pockets. For $29.95 a month, VIP Club members--somewhat similar to Mafia Wars' Loyalty Program--will receive double experience from games, free limited edition items monthly, access to "members-only" tables for those who play high stakes and a VIP badge on your table profile for all to see.

While the extra experience and items are a plus, let's face the facts: what your $30 monthly fee is really going towards is status, as goes with most high-profile memberships. This is all well and good if you want to play poker games with players you know are willing to put up some serious chips, but to include a badge feature can be looked at from two sides. Either players will be impressed by your supposed skill and presumed wealth or snicker when catching sight of your badge for purchasing such a feature.

However, these transactions are all about return on investment: will you play enough Zynga Poker to warrant the monthly fee? And besides, VIP status exists for those who thrive in the limelight (i.e. take on the scrutiny willingly). So, if you're one of those types and are lucky skilled at internet poker, then this looks like the program for you. Hey, at least Zynga's being up front about this one.

PetVille's flaming Baby Phoenix stealthily introduced for e-mail subscribers

PetVille Baby Phoenix
According to a member of the PetVille forums, Isabella Boo, her son received a Baby Phoenix Egg in an e-mail from Zynga. Another forum-goer simply known as Highly has posted images of her very own glowing Baby Phoenix as it soars around her room and back into its egg. Several other forum members have confirmed that the e-mail is legitimate, but some are having trouble receiving the adorable, winged fireball in PetVille. This pet is an exclusive reward for signing up to receive e-mail updates from PetVille and has not been officially announced.

Details such as hatching time or whether this blazing baby bird will reach adulthood are scarce, but stay glued to your e-mail over the next few weeks to see when you receive yours. If you haven't yet signed up for e-mail updates from PetVille, just head over to the Zynga account page for PetVille and sign yourself up.

This item addition is very similar to Zynga's recent introduction of the Treehouse to FrontierVille players who subscribe for e-mail updates. It's unfortunate that these items--which are usually far cooler than most accessible items-- are available for e-mail subscribers only as there must be a good amount of players who simply aren't comfortable sharing their e-mail address in fear of spam or account compromise. Hopefully in the future this item is added into the game as part of a contest or at least for Pet Cash or coins. Sadly, when it comes to exclusivity, this is the name of the game.

Mafia Wars Halloween Loot Event: Complete jobs and brawl for seven rare costumes

Halloween Loot Event
Just when you thought Zynga was done with Halloween in Mafia Wars, the team throws a change up with the Halloween Loot Event. On top of everything else going on this season, doing jobs and beating the pulp out of people like normal will randomly drop one of seven new Halloween costume items like the Devil Costume and Zombie Costume (top left).

Collecting all seven costumes will reward players with the Vampire Bat, an animal with 67 Attack and 34 Defense, which when compared with the stats on the collection's seven other items is pretty impressive, unfortunately. Some of the costumes are actually pretty elaborate (and scary!) like the Ghost Costume (top right). Could you imagine walking into a Halloween party and seeing a dude dressed like that? Either way, this is a free event that will last through Oct. 31. So, get to... doing what you normally do--and quick--if you want to complete the whole Halloween set.

CityVille Cheats and Tips: How Decorations Earn You More Coins

While efficient Goods management and mastering your Franchises in CityVille will certainly make you a far more successful mayor, one player has pointed out an extremely important aspect of the game that has the potential to send your profits sky high by implementing some hardcore decorating methods.

You can see in the image above, Josh Morlan (a.k.a. morlanjo) has done his math, using the Pool Hall as his example, he calculated that:

    Normal Pool Hall output: 420 coins
    Output with bonus: 1391 coins
    1 energy = 1391 coins
    Each Charlieville train I send out for more goods nets me 991 coins (that's
    -400 coins for the 100 production)

Basically, collecting money from businesses will always cost 1 Energy (Note: Resupplying businesses with goods doesn't use up Energy!). So he decided to choose a business that will pay him the most money and raise its profits by surrounding it with decorations that offer the biggest boosts. For most folks, that big boost decoration would be the Arboretum, which offers +16% and costs 4,000 Coins. In the top image, you can see he's also using the Bronze Statue (+2%) and Flower Patch (+1%) to plug any leftover space. Why is there space leftover? Well, your business needs to connect to the Asphalt Roads in order to make money. Between his Bronze Statues, you can see the small strip of Sidewalk that lets the Pool Hall connect to the street.

After all these changes, each Energy Josh spends on the Pool Hall will now nab him 1,391 Coins instead of 420 Coins. The great thing about this setup is that you can reuse the Arboretum on the sides by putting down another business. You can also swap out the business for a higher paying one when it becomes available. (Hot Tip: The bonus boosts work for when you collect, so you can use this decoration plan on more than one business. You just gotta do it one at a time.) This seems to be the best Energy-saving and money-making plan for the long run.
Macoan's CityVille 4x4 decorations chart
Another user, Michael A. Coan (a.k.a. macoan) made some handy charts to help other players with laying down decorations. For businesses that take up a 4x4 space (such as Josh's Pool Hall), click here. For those that use up 3x3, click here.

Cafe World Holiday Dinner Catering Order: Everything you need to know

Attention all Cafe World caterers! A new job is now available to undertake via your Catering Van (the Catering Business menu), and it comes in the form of the "Holiday Dinner" order. Not to be confused with the Company Holiday Party job released last week, this is an entirely new catering order that sees you catering a Holiday Dinner, apparently just for friends, instead of for an entire company.

This job seems to be setup like most of the others, with a total of three stars available to earn, depending on how quickly you can complete the order, with the 3--star prize being a large decoration that you'd likely see up at Santa's Workshop. Meet us behind the break for everything you need to know about this new catering mission.

Once you start the Holiday Dinner catering job, you'll see that you have three full days to complete the job in order to do so with a three star rating. This job asks you to cook three holiday-themed dishes, which actually makes this catering job one of the hardest ever released, as these holiday recipes start out as locked out for users, until they can complete enough of the Holiday Dinner goals (remember, goals are an entirely different feature than Catering) in order to unlock access to cooking them. For example, the Baked Ham recipe that we'll talk about a little later can only be cooked after finishing part 5 of the Holiday Dinner Goals.

Whether or not you've unlocked these recipes does not affect your ability to accept the Catering order, so if you think you have enough friends on your account that have already unlocked those recipes and will be cooking them for their own stake with this job, go right ahead. Still, it seems unreasonable that Zynga would give such a short time limit of three days when this is the case. Luckily, this order as a convenient "Cancel Order" button located on its menu, so if you'd rather not even attempt the job until you have personally unlocked all three dishes, go right ahead - we won't blame you, as we're doing the same.

Moving onto the task at hand, however, once you are ready to tackle this mission, you'll need to serve Waldorf Salad 127 times, Baked Ham 138 times, and Angel Slices 63 times. You can unlock these tasks for Cafe Cash, at a price of 20, 18, and 16 Cafe Cash, respectively. In addition, you'll need to collect 15 Candy Canes and 10 Gingerbread Men to finish off this job's tasks.

For finishing the job in order three days, you'll earn 6 Catering Points, 6,300 Cafe Points, 141,750 Coins, and the Toy Workshop Bench decoration - a large animated item that has an elf diligently working away at a table in Santa's Workshop.

For the 2-star prize, you are given a total of five days to complete the order. This results in a prize of 4 Catering Points, 4,500 Cafe Points and 101,250 coins.

Finally, the 1-star prize will be received for simply finishing the mission, even if you go past the five day time limit. For going through with completing the order, you'll receive 2 Catering Points, 2,700 Cafe Points, and 60,750 coins - not a bad haul, considering.

For this job, you can have up to 11 people, including yourself, working on the job at once. You can either click on the "Ask for Help!" button to send individual requests to friends to ask them for help, or you can go into the Catering Business menu to see if any of your friends have already undertaken this job themselves, and if they have, you can instantly join their catering crew, if there are any positions left.

Since this job is such a difficult one (unless you and 10 of your friends just happen to have already unlocked the three Holiday dishes), this might be the time when you should take advantage of the ability to add more than the standard 11 total crew members to your order. This is done by clicking on the "Unlock Slot" button, at which point you are asked to gather the proper gear to allow another chef into the kitchen. You'll need to gather 1 Hat, 1 Jacket, 1 Pants, and 2 Pairs of Shoes in order to unlock a new crew slot, which can be done by asking your friends to send you the items via individual requests. You can skip this step entirely by simply paying 5 Cafe Cash to unlock the new slot instantly, if you so choose.

Remember, no matter what happens with your catering order (that is, no matter which star rating you end up getting), you'll be able to retry it if you so choose to get a higher score, and perhaps even unlock the Toy Workshop Bench decoration, if you didn't unlock it the first time around.

There's no telling whether or not this job will expire after the holiday season is over, so make sure to take a stab at this job while you're guaranteed to have a good shot at it. Besides, if you start the job now, you'll have the best chance of finding other players on your friends' list that are also trying the catering job, giving you an even better chance at success, so keep that in mind.

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.

How fair do you think this Catering Mission is? Do you think Zynga should allow warn users about locked dishes before allowing them to start the job - or should these dishes be locked in the first place?

CityVille: Help choose which building(s) will be released next!

As CityVille has already been launched into the #5 spot on the overall Facebook app leaderboards, it's not surprising that Zynga is looking to expand the amount of content in the game. What's more, they've decided to give us, the real players of the game, a chance to help shape and influence the content that will be added in the coming days and weeks. This comes, first and foremost, in the form of a new poll on the official CityVille forums, where users can look at a variety of possible new buildings that may or may not be added to the game, and vote for their favorites.

As of right now, there are just five buildings to choose from, and you'll need to login to the forums in order to vote (a simply login with Facebook Connect will allow you to vote with the least amount of hassle). The choices are:

Power Plant
Gas Station
Prison
Parking Lot
Casino

As of this writing, the post has only been open for a matter of hours, and the Casino is winning with almost 46% of the vote. Second is the gas station with 24%, and the other options decrease from there. For the sake of the argument, the Parking Lot is in last place currently, with just 7% of the vote.

Interestingly, Zynga has made clear whether these items would be classified as businesses or community buildings. While it's presumable that items like the Casino and Gas Station would be released as businesses alongside the current options like the Toy Store or Diner, the Prison could very well be a community building, allowing you to add more population to your town (after all, the Police Station is a community building, so why stop there?).

We don't know when the winning item will be added to the game, but keep checking back with us, as we'll make sure you're the first to know which item wins, and when we'll see it in the game (personally, we're hoping for the Casino, so we're glad we're not alone in that vote).

CityVille: HQ Payouts doubled, game balance tweaked, bugs fixed

Almost a week has gone by since Zynga released their first major game upgrade for CityVille, providing for a Bonus Meter that's easier to fill, resulting in more profits for users, and a streamlined storage bar, that now contains both ship and overall Goods in one total (among other changes and improvements), but they haven't stopped there.

The developer has now announced an even larger list of changes that have taken place in the game this week (including one once again affecting the Bonus Meter), with some of these actually working to hurt the very rapid progress users have been experiencing since the game's launch.

As usual, we have the full list of improvements and changes behind the break, so meet us there, won't you?
First and foremost - the good news. The first bit of good news it the fact that HQ payout bonuses have now been doubled. That's right, from now on, when collecting from your Franchise HQs (not those franchises that your friends have added to your town - the actual Franchise skyscraper(s) you have in your town), you'll earn double the coins as before. With coins being perhaps the most valuable commodity in the game (aside from maybe energy), anyway to earn bonus coins is definitely appreciated.

Next, a bit of bad news. When supplying your franchises, you'll no longer receive bonus energy. While energy hasn't really been an issue for most users, who can play the game in five or ten minute sessions and never run out, this might become a bit harder to do, as this bonus energy is no more. Zynga says the reasoning behind this alteration was to "improve game balance," so we'll have to see how that works out for them.

As for Quests, earning items for your quests will now be easier thanks to the altered time limit for posting item requests. At launch, the request window was "once every 24 hours." Now though, players can now post item requests for items (like Chocolates, Endorsements, and the like, depending on the Quest) once every four hours.

Two other improvements come in the form of tweaked train values, which sees the amount of coins required for each amount of good when sending off your trains being altered slightly, and in the form of a changed Bronze Statue Payout Bonus. The Bronze Statue is a decorative item available to purchase from the store. Now, though, the payout bonus that you receive from the Bronze Statue has been reduced, again, as Zynga says, to help improve game balance.

While this is already a lot of changes to take in, there are even more general bug fixes to speak of, ranging from improving the texts in wall posts, to lessening the amount of Out of Sync errors that a player could potentially run into while performing certain (at the time) bugged activities. Here's the list of bug fixes, straight from Zynga:

        Collections Feed Posts - Collections feed posts now correctly states "Get 50 coins".
        Bonus Meter - Fixed/adjusted bonus meter payouts, and issues related to bonus meter progression.
        OOS errors when supplying franchises - Fixed the issue that was causing OOS errors when supplying franchises.
        Friends listed on the requests page - Requests of the same type can only be sent to the same friend once per day; fixed the issue where friends were still appearing on the list, which was causing some of the gifts/requests related issues.
        Franchise HQ displayed payout bonus - Fixed the issue where franchise HQ payout bonuses were being displayed incorrectly.
        Quest: Build City Funds - Resolved the issue with requesting "Capital Endorsements".
        XP Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between XP being added and XP shown, which was causing OOS errors after leveling
        Coin Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between coins being added when collecting from businesses to the coins shown, which was causing the appearance of losing coins after refreshing the game and OOS errors when spending coins which were not being counted.

As we said at the beginning of this post, we can now see that the Bonus Meter has been altered yet again (seems they haven't been able to strike a nice balance as of yet). However, instead of changing the overall amount of coins that are awarded (like with the first change of the meter), we now see its progression being altered. That is, after the first week, teh meter would stick at the "Masterful," and would slowly fill, if it ever actually filled at all. This resulted in one large sum of bonus coins being awarded (in my game the bonus was always somewhere around 4,000+ coins.

Now, though, the Masterful bar fills just as quickly as the others, and once it is completely full, the bonus levels cycle back around to the first stage of "Bonus," and continues from there. In this way, you may receive four 1,000 coin bonuses instead of one large 4,000 coin bonus, which is actually fine with us. Hopefully this is how the meter will stay too, as we really like all of those bonus coins that we've been getting.

CityVille: Changes to interface make the game more hassle-free!

By now, most of us have gotten pretty used to the gameplay in CityVille, and by extension, we've also gotten used to the design problems (however few, or minor) that have been present in the user interface. Two of these problems have been fixed by Zynga, as they have announced via the game's official forums that the technical side of gameplay has now been streamlined to be more user, or at least "patience" friendly.

First and foremost, you'll no longer receive a pop-up every time you collect a collectible from a building, when that collectible is going into a collection that has already been completed, but has yet to be turned in. That is, if you're saving up all of your "Peaceful Living Collection" items, because you simply don't need any more free White Picket Fences, you'll no longer be bothered by a pop-up that must be clicked on, alerting you that you've completed the collection again and again. This will greatly help those that like to max out their Bonus Meters, as you won't have to stop clicking on Bonus items long enough to close the window, and therefore won't be as likely to lose your streak without hitting the "Masterful" level in the meter.

Another big change comes with the new ability to now use Battery (read: Energy) items from your inventory in rapid succession, without having to wait for the inventory to close, and open the inventory all over again. Essentially, this will save you from having to reopen and close the inventory ad nauseum, which makes recharging your energy that much easier when doing so with gifts accepted from friends.

Two other changes worth mentioning come with quests and other in-game items, not associated with the gameplay menus. They see a change in the Cinema Quest line, that removes a bug that would stop the Cinema from being available to purchase even after unlocking it in the previous quest, and an addition of Support and Forum links to the game page, so that all players now have instant access to Zynga's support site and the official forums, should they experience problems while playing CityVille.

FrontierVille: Timed Missions will expire tonight if you don't accept them now!

If you've been holding off on accepting one of the many Timed Missions we've seen released in FrontierVille over the recent weeks and months, now is definitely the time to do so, as when the year of 2010 comes to an end this evening, it will take with it your ability to accept four Timed Missions in the game. Say goodbye to the mission, but also say goodbye to any exclusive prizes that you could earn if you had accepted them.

The expiring missions are the Playtime!, Mutton Bustin', Hoedown, and Barbecue Party missions. We have complete guides on how to finish each and every one of these missions, so don't feel overwhelmed if you've yet to start any of them. Remember, depending on the mission, you'll have varying amounts of time (2 - 5 days) to complete these missions once you accept them. There are tons of rewards to earn here, like Experience Points, Coins, and even some decorative items, including the musical Fiddle, which is otherwise only available as a Horseshoe item.

Check out the guides to complete these four missions below, and good luck to all those that attempt to take them on in a mad dash to the finish!

Playtime! Mission Guide
Hoedown Mission Guide
Barbecue Party Mission Guide
Mutton Bustin' Mission Guide

Cafe World: The Saga of the New Years Goals continues, but this time with free iPads!

Heya Chefs! We've been taking an in-depth look at how Zynga will be ringing in the New Year in Cafe World throughout this week, and at simply how much work needs to be done in an assumed short amount of time. Many users (myself included) are questioning whether or not it will even be worth it to complete the eight New Years Party Goals, even if we miss out on four exclusive recipes in the process, just because of how many things we need to collect, mostly with friends' help.

Zynga is looking to get players back into the gaming spirit, however, as they have offered some amazing real world incentive for users to finish the eight missions. They are now holding a contest, where each person that finishes all eight goals will automatically be entered to win one of 5 iPads, 5 iPod Touches, and 5 Flip Cameras! How's that for incentive!?

These are some fantastic prizes, worth hundreds of dollars in the real world, and they definitely work to create a shining light at the end of the very long tunnel that is these New Years Goals. However, if you can do so before January 10, you'll be entered for your chance to win!

Check out the rest of our New Years coverage right here.