FarmVille - About the game

Introduction:

FarmVille is a real-time online computer game by Zynga, launched in 2009. The game is a freemium game, meaning there is no cost to play but players have the option of purchasing premium content. It was once the most popular Facebook game, however recently has seen a decline in popularity. As of September 2011, FarmVille was the third most popular Facebook game, behind CityVille and The Sims Social, and steadily declining in popularity. (33 million Nov 2011, 28 million March 2012)
 

The goal:  enjoy yourself!

You start a farm, plant crops and trees, and tend animals.
After some time you harvest them.
These activities give you experience and coins (and a limited amount of farm cash).
Those allow you to level up and expand your farm.

This game provides a very real sense of personal achievement.
You see your farm grow and evolve as the result of your effort.

This is (supposedly) a non-competitive game.
There is no winner or loser, you make and tend your own farm for your own pleasure.

No battles, no fighting.
I like that as a welcome change from all the aggressive computer games.

You can try anything you want:

	Level up and max out as quick as possible (rather easy, and very much self-limiting)
	Visit with neighbors
	Collect mastery signs, ribbons, trees, animals ... That takes time, regardless how you do it, but ultimately, it doesn't mean anything. Nothing is really 'mastered' other than clicking a gazillion times...
	Make it look nice :-) When all the rest is said and done, this is pretty much the only thing left to do ... IMO, it is useful to have a solid production base first, before putting much effort into good looks. But that's only my personal opinion.

Important:

	This is a GAME.
	The farm is not real! IT'S A CARTOON!
	Don't take it too seriously. This is supposed to be fun.
	Don't try to make it competitive.

Freemium: This game can be played for free, BUT:

	Zynga is very much a for-profit company and wants you to spend real money!
	Gameplay is set up in such a way that eventually you'll be sorely tempted to spend some real cash to purchase shortcuts.
	Many upgrades and limited edition items can only be unlocked by using Farm Cash. Because your FV-cash is very limited within the game, this often means real money!
	EVERYTHING is for sale in this game. Coins, cash, farm expansions, even experience for leveling up! You can buy (a cartoon of) the largest spreads in every farm and every item on it without ever doing a thing in it!
	There is absolutely no need to buy your way up in this game. This beginners guide looks only at freebie playing.

Browsers for FarmVille.

	Internet Explorer is in my experience NOT a good browser to play this game. On every computer that I have tried, with different operating systems, the game starts to slow down to a crawl after less than 30 minutes and I started getting error messages: "A script makes this browser slow and may make your computer unresponsive" Closing/opening the browser helps only very temporarily. Repeatedly clearing cache and helps a little bit, but the initial loading after that takes forever, and the improvement does not last very long before it slows down again.
	Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are two browsers that seem to do much better with this game. The game loads easier and does not slow down as with IE.
	Regardless which browser you use, make sure you have only ONE game window open at any given time. The links from newsfeeds often open a new game window. Close that new window before the game comes up completely, especially if Yours Truly is working the field in another window. You will get out-of-sync problems if you forget to close such a window, regardless whether you play the game on Facebook or farmville.com.
	I have added both websites  in my 'favorites' shortcuts, which allows me to switch back and forth between the two websites within the same window. That  forces the game to reload and seems to prevent some of the out-of-sync problems. It also appears to temporarily speed up the game somewhat.
	I occasionally switch between browsers, mostly firefox and google chrome. This also forces the game to reset, and appears to help reduce some of the loading problems. I no longer use IE for this game, although IE9 on Vista seems to work slightly better.

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Page last modified: August 01, 2012
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