Zynga's FarmVille On Facebook

I had been using Farm Town for a good couple of months before the whole noise about Zynga's FarmVille, allegedly a cartoonish ripoff version of Slashkey's Farm Town, finally got to me. Initially, I was adamant to sticking with Farm Town, having spent ages building my farm and establishing my online presence in it's virtual community. Still, my friends on Facebook were flocking to use it in the droves. The forums were buzzing with the controvesy of how way too similar those two applications are and which one was best. I could resist trying it myself no longer...

One month in and you could tell I've been putting in the hours :)

Here's what I think of FarmVille:

Great things about FarmVille: It's polished!

1. They got the core functionality of an online farming game right.
2. It's easy and fast to plough, plant and harvest and now that I have the use of a tractor, harvester and seeder work on the farm has become even more fun!
3. They seem to be more responsive to their user community constantly changing and adapting
4. Great graphics
5. The plants, trees, animals and buildings enjoy such rich vivid colours
6. The player's avatar has way more customisable (and flattering) facial and hair styles to choose from

Not so great things about FarmVille: It's not very sociable!

1. Connection problems left my session out of sync with their server and lost me coins, crops and animals
2. A lack of an 'undo' button saw me losing a tractor that I accidentally deleted very soon after I purchased it for 30,000 coins. Ouch!
3. For a social game it offers very little social interaction, the very thing former Farm Town users have come to expect: It has no chat functionality, there is no market square where you can meet and socialise with the online FarmVille community (for that you need to join the forums),
4. You can't hire or be hired to work on someone else's farm so no chance of earning extra money or experience and again no emphasis on growth through community.
5. While you can collect eggs from chickens, milk from cows, feathers from ducks the animals are mainly stationary, not roaming around like in Farm Town.
6. There are items in the store that you can only purchase with Farm Ville Cash, not coins. The only way to get FarmVille cash is by buying with real money.

In conclusion

Despite it's shortcomings I think FarmVille did very well for the relatively short period of time it's been around and it's constantly and rapidly evolving so watch this space.

Here's how you can get started using Farm Ville:

The toolkit is very simple. Use the multi tool curser to point and click on a plot to plough, plant and harvest. Later on you can buy the tractor, the harvester and the seeder (30,000 each) to help spare your poor wrist from clicking by ploughing, planting and harvesting en-mass. Use the market icon to buy seeds, animals, trees and buildings and use the gift link to collect your gifts.

The rest will become very clear very quickly.

A good strategy is to start planting strawberries, as many as you can and as often as possible. The variety of seeds available to you when you begin is such that strawberries are the most cost effective seeds. As you grow in experience and status in Farm Ville you will unlock more seeds, buildings, decorations etc...

Another good startegy to adopt is to expand your farm when possible, you need coins and friends to do that, failing that you can always buy FarmVille cash.

A useful formula:
Here's how to calculate the amount of coins you gain per hour from farming a certain type of crop on one plot in FarmVille:
Harvest revenue -(cost of seeds + cost of ploughing of one plot) /number of hours it takes for crop to mature


And here are the crops in order of their profitability:
FarmVille  /  Crop coins per hour
Tomatoes 7.25
Sunflowers  6.88
Coffee   6.75
Blueberries  6.50
Carrots   6.25
Raspberries  5.50
Peppers   3.21
Rice    3.00
Corn   2.99
Pumpkins  2.88
Pineapple  2.75
Squash   2.75
Potatoes   2.71
Strawberrie  2.50
Yellow Bell  2.25
Watermelon  2.11
Cotton   1.63
Soybeans  1.38
Artichokes  1.24
Eggplant   1.00
Wheat   0.90