Dear Mafia Wars Players,

We’ve given the Godfather page a makeover with the introduction of the Marketplace! Our goal was create a page with a fresh new look; something that’s easy to navigate and that’ll contribute to your game play.

With the new Marketplace, you’ll never miss out on another Limited Edition item on sale. We’ll have easy-to-find hourly sales specials, and you’ll be able to find the coolest loot from the categorized pull-down menus. Get the scoop on what the most coveted items in the game are by checking out the ‘Best Sellers’ and ‘Hot and New’ categories.

There’ll be no more stress for you about how to spend your Reward Points. Now you’ll have items recommended especially for you based on previous purchases and your personal style of game play. Just check out the ‘Recommended for You’ section and you’re all set. If you’re a fighter, you’ll be shown the best attack weapons for the game, and if you’re all about protecting your holdings, we’ll showcase our awesome defense items.

The Marketplace now accepts international payments, and offers over 20 different types of currencies to accommodate our international players. To celebrate the grand opening, we are giving you 2 free Reward Points to use. Simply click here to collect your points!

We have all this for you, and much, much more. Go play Mafia Wars and get ready to be blown away by the Marketplace!

All The Best,
The Mafia Wars Team, click here to play

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Mafia Wars is getting ready to lavish you with cool new game updates for our Valentine’s Day Event starting Tuesday, February 9th. First off is a new featured job – the Valentine’s Day Massacre.  This featured job will be played similarly to NYE featured job – it’ll be broken up into three special jobs for you to choose from that each have timers, and you’ll be awarded with  unique Valentine’s Day bonuses for each stage you complete. Finish the featured job for a cool mastery item! Because we want everyone to feel the love and get the mastery item from the event, we’ll be offering some extra help. You’ll be able to use Reward Points to speed up the job timers, and will also have the option to ask for help from your mafia.

Our next present for you is our new Valentine’s Day Collection. As you do jobs, fight, or work on completing the featured job, you’ll be rewarded with Limited Edition loot drops. Vault this exclusive collection to get the coveted Cupid’s Arrow. A hint for you – one of the collection items is a gift item, so be generous with your mafia and maybe they’ll send you that special Valentine in return. And if you want another achievement to brag about, master the featured job and vault the Valentine’s Day Collection to get the “Love Hurts” achievement on top of all your other rewards.

We’ll also be bringing you a new Gift Safehouse – Mafia Love Edition. Play and find out if your mafia loves you. Ask your mafia members for gifts and work on filling up the Mafia Love Meter. If your members are loyal, they’ll send you items that’ll raise your Love Meter when you open them.  But be sure your rank is high in your mafia – if your members choose to disrespect you and send you a gag gift, your Love Meter will drop once your gift is opened! Fill up your Love meter to 100% and get a Limited Edition item to use in the game.

We hope you’ll love your gifts and that everyone will be able to join us for a very special Mafia Valentine’s Day this year!

Sincerely,

The Mafia Wars Team, click here to play 

 

We have more cool updates coming your way on Mafia Wars! This time we're revamping the New York properties. We'll be introducing some changes to promote the return of robbing, so read on and check out the upgrades we're planning on making...

1) We'll have properties switched to Flash mode, so make sure you have the latest version (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/).

2) We'll be getting rid of 'undeveloped space'. The costs of undeveloped space will be folded into the costs of the updated properties. If you currently have any undeveloped properties, it’ll be sold off and you'll have your money returned to you.

3) Instead of owning 30 Mega Casinos, you will have 1 Mega Casino, but it will have been upgraded 30 times.

4) You won't be able to sell properties anymore, but you can continue to upgrade them. If you still haven't earned your "Cashing Out" achievement, do it soon!

5) All properties will have the same payout over time that they currently do, but some of the rates will change. They will take between 8 hours and 2 days to fill up. For example, say you currently owned 2 mega casinos. They produce $1,800,000 every 3 hours for you to collect. In the new system, you will now own a single level 2 Mega Casino, and it will produce $28,800,000 every 48 hours for you to collect.

6) You can only collect on your property once it is done producing. There will be progress bars and countdown timers letting you know how long it will be before you can collect on each property.

7) Properties will no longer "shut down". *Note: This only affects users who have started playing in the last few months.

8) People who have Rackets will be folded into the new system as well, but that change will take place a week or two after the launch of the new properties.

An important point we want to emphasize is that you will NOT be losing any money when we change the New York properties; it will all stay within the game. These upgrades are going hand-in-hand with the robbing feature that we'll be bringing back due to popular demand.

Stay tuned, there's more to come!

Sincerely,

The Mafia Wars Team, click here to play

 

Mafia Wars Bangkok is now officially in open beta! If you've already collected the 3 hidden items in the New York jobs and are level 18 and above, you're eligible to grab your passport and continue growing your Mafia empire in Thailand!

There are three ways to get your passport - see the clerk, ask your friends, or bribe an official. You can only see the clerk once a day for a passport drop. If you don't get one on your first try, don't give up - the clerk will grant you access soon enough if you keep being persistent. You can also post a request for a passport and see if some of your more well-connected Mafia members can hook you up. If you're really itching to get your travel started, bribing an official is your guarantee for instant access. Not only will you get a passport for yourself, you'll get 3 additional ones to hand out to some very lucky Mafia members.

Our goal for this passport distribution system is to maintain a steady flow of users coming into the new city to keep the Bangkok servers running smoothly for everyone. We want to provide exciting and uninterrupted game play for all, while giving you a fun and challenging obstacle to conquer.

So, once you have your passport in hand, pack up your suitcase and go master Bangkok! Good luck to all! 

From,

The Mafia Wars Team, click here to play  

 

Mafia Wars is proud to unleash its newest city – Bangkok, a city overrun by crime and chaos as two gangs struggle for dominance over turf. Get ready – you’ll finally get the opportunity to continue expanding your Mafia Empire.  Do a brand new set of jobs, take over more businesses, battle with a new set of bosses, and earn even more achievements!

First, choose which side you’ll be loyal to – the Yakuza or the Triads. While the Yakuza place value in a good offense and in increasing their attack power, the Triads focus on strengthening their defenses to ward off attacks. Each faction has its own unique weapons and businesses to offer in exchange for your loyalty, and that allegiance will affect the rest of your game play. As you do certain jobs and fight against members of your rival faction, you’ll climb the ranks and earn respect within your own faction. Earning enough loyalty grants you access to special items at the Faction Store that are exclusive to that side.

In Bangkok, how you choose to spend your energy has never been more important.  Be careful how you choose to play – siding entirely with one faction is sure to anger the other. As you use your energy in jobs and fights to increase your street credit with one side, your reputation will decrease with the other side. If your reputation drops below a certain level with a faction, they’ll cut off your access to their select items, so get a game plan and play wisely!

One of the ways we’ve made Bangkok unique from our other expansions is to make it more accessible to newer players. As long as you are level 18 and above and have collected the Yakuza Sake, Triad Coin, and Thai Note found in the New York jobs, you can travel to Bangkok once you have obtained your Passport. For players between levels 18 and 200, we’ve created a sliding scale for energy costs and experience payouts for jobs. This means that lower-level players can complete new jobs and advance through Bangkok’s episodes, as jobs will require less energy to complete but have correspondingly lowered experience rewards. Players who are above level 200 will not be affected by this sliding scale.

We hope everyone will enjoy this latest addition to Mafia Wars. Stay tuned for the release and try to grab your Thai passport to start your crime spree!

From,

The Mafia Wars Team, click here to play

We’d like to announce that over the next few days, we’ll be making changes to the layout of the Mafia Wars home page. You’ll still be able to do everything you did before - send your gifts, play the lotto, and get energy packs like you normally do. We just want to make your game play as enjoyable as possible and make those actions easier and better.

One change you’ll notice is a message box on the right side of the home page that’ll contain all of your recent messages. It’ll show how many messages you have, and let you quickly navigate from one message to the next.  We’ll also be introducing a cool new feature – the Recommendation Box, which will suggest up to 3 different jobs in New York and Cuba for you to complete.

We’ll be switching our players to the new system in groups throughout next week, so please bear with us and be patient. We're planning on adding even more features and improvements to the new homepage in the near future, so it’ll get even better over time. We hope you enjoy the upgrade!

 

Sincerely,

 

The Mafia Wars Team

 

 

On January 12^th, 2010, Haiti faced a devastating blow when it got hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The quake destroyed buildings, knocked down power lines, and caused major catastrophe for the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. In light of the recent devastation the country has faced, Mafia Wars is committed to help the people of Haiti in their relief efforts. We’re proud to bring back the Haitian Drum to Mafia Wars – a Limited Edition item we had released last December to help fund school meals in Haiti.

Zynga and Mafia Wars have already been making efforts to aid Haiti through FATEM, a non –profit organization that works to provide economic advancements for the Haitian community of Mirebalais (www.fatem.org). This time, we’re planning on contributing on a larger scale – 100% of the proceeds from the Haitian Drum purchase will go toward the restoration of the most basic necessities of the people of Haiti who’ve suffered from the devastating quake.

Mafia Wars would like to thank the charitable spirit of our players for their support in bringing back the Haitian Drum for this most noteworthy cause. Together, we can help make a difference in the lives of the Haitian people who have been impacted by this disaster.

For more information on the cause and how you can help, please visit us at www.zynga.org.

Respectfully,

The Mafia Wars Team

Greetings,

We’ve been able to track all users affected by the issue that started on January 5th. Users that contact our support team and are verified through our systems will be assisted. We will do our best to proactively restore all affected users and get them back in the game as soon as possible.

We apologize to those who have had an interruption to their gaming schedule due to this occurrence. All teams are diligently working to rectify this issue.

If you need assistance, you can research articles or file a support ticket here: http://zynga.custhelp.com/app/answers/list/p/2

For users not affected by this issue, we appreciate your support as we give our attention to those users who currently are having issues.

We thank you all for your ongoing support!

The Mafia Wars Team

To ring in the New Year, Mafia Wars is unveiling its latest featured job - "Last Score of 2009"! For this featured job, we're leaving it up to you on how you want to play. You'll have your choice of three different jobs to work on that each have their own unique New Year's Bonus. Master your job and you'll receive a rare item as your reward! Be sure to watch your newsfeeds - if your mafia members complete any of the three jobs, they can share the wealth with you and offer you Reward Points!

We're also just on the verge of unleashing Bangkok! If you haven't already, go get a head start and collect your loot items needed to unlock Bangkok. Keep your eyes peeled - you'll be able to grab your Thai Passport and travel to the new city soon enough.

If that's not enough for you, we're also giving away 5 FREE Reward Points in celebration of the New Year and as a thank you to our players. Click here  for your points and play now! Be sure to score big before 2010!

 

Thank You,

The Mafia Wars Team

Overall, 2009 was a great year for Mafia Wars. And although we had some issues towards the end of the year, we were able to fix most of the bugs while prepping many of the exciting features that promises to make 2010 a banner year for Mafia Wars. Some of the features we have in store for you in the coming months:

New Years Job: We're heading into 2010 in exciting fashion with a featured job starting December 28th and running through January 4th. This featured job will give you even more options than before including choosing different missions with different payouts.  

Release of new city - Bangkok: Originally slated to debut in December 2009, Bangkok will finally make its premiere in January 2010. We intentionally delayed Bangkok to fine-tune it for an improved game experience. 

Multi-item gifting: We're making it easier for you to make your mafia stronger by providing multi-item gifting.

Translations: For our many international players, we will be adding translations of Mafia Wars in many different languages in addition to our current offering.

Robbing: We heard you loud and clear, we're bringing back robbing in a new and improved format.  

In addition to features, we are also enhancing community outreach through various initiatives:

Developers Days: A series of intimate meetups between players and Mafia product team members where idea generation and candid conversations can take place.

Exclusive Betas: Preview, testing, and feedback of features by users before full release.

Weekly Giveaways, Rewards, Contests: Bigger and better giveaways, contests, and rewards. 

Thank you very much for supporting Mafia Wars and making it the best game on the web. We feel very lucky and fortunate to have you as players and feel humbled to be building features for you all.

Have a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!

On behalf of the Mafia Wars Team,

Justin, General Manager, click here to play