Were Moving to onehobbyatatime.blogspot.com

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately with my blogging goals and the goals of One Hobby at a Time, and realized they are inextricably linked. I want to blog about myself and my life, like a journal, and my hobbies and this effort is a part of that. Therefore, starting Tuesday July 26th, I will be decommissioning this site, and transferring all the posts to a new blog @ http://onehobbyatatime.blogspot.com/.

Confused? I am still a little confused as well. In addition to this blog, I also manage davidlarrimore.blogspot.com which is on a completely separate gmail account, that is actually my main account. Up to now, I have had to log in and out of accounts to blog posts and It has not been worth the trouble. additionally, I felt that davidlarrimore.blogspot.com was a little to "suit and tie " for what i'm trying to accomplish, and I didn't want every potentional employer to see my posts on FarmVille and managing a freshwater aquarium so it is really a 2 part move. I am going to be migrating this blog (pics and all) to my other blogger account. I will also be migrating my davidlarrimore.blogspot.com posts to onehobbyatatime.blogspot.com for consistancy. davidlarrimore.blogspot.com will be my new professional blog for all of my work/career related blogging.

In the end, it will be easier for you and me to follow along with the whole story!

http://onehobbyatatime.blogspot.com/

Manifest Destiny

On Day 21, I was finally able to expand my FrontierVille homestead. That means it took about 15 days of sending out requests for parts to my friends and receiving the parts piece by piece. If I could guess, based upon the price of horseshoes in the game, it would have cost $10 - $15 real world dollars to do the same thing. I don't even want to guess how much it would cost to get the next expansion.

After receiving the land expansion I quickly realized that I now have more land to maintain and it will take several days and many hours to clear all the trees out of the way to even take advantage of the expansion.

Social Network Gaming with Non-Social Networking Gaming Friends

 One of the hardest parts of this Hobby has been engaging in the social aspect. I do have several friends that I would consider gamers, but most of them scoff at the thought of playing social network gaming and consider the overal experience cheap and unworthy of their skills. Most of my other friends either played the games in the past, and have since stopped, or have blocked the games altogether.

Facebook provides a handy feature that allows you to block messages from specific social network games, so it is possible that you could send 100 requests a day, and no one will recieve them.

I have also noticed that people that still play the games are pretty dedidated and play consistantly. These are the friends that I have pretty much been depending upon for help in games like FrontierVille where recieving gifts from friends is practically the only way to complete buildings and advance the game without spending real world money.

If you would like to get help from friends, and find out who playes the game, I would recommend just sending out a message to your friends asking them if they play the game or would be willing to send you a friend/ally/neighbor request.

Mafia Wars - Brazil

In an attempt to revitalize my interest in Mafia Wars, I traveled over to their Brazil area. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mafia Wars is a little different when you travel and I don't just mean the names of properties and weapons. The interface changes and your quests are structured differently. In order to buy new properties, and upgrade those properties, you need to complete quests. Your quests actually tell you what your loot is and you do not have to keep scouring the page to check on your energy and experience gauges because they integrate them into the quest box. The different locations use different currency so my New York dollars are useless in Brazil, as are your New York weapons.

Looking at all this made me wonder why the crew at Zynga are using 2 different interfaces. The only thing I can speculate is that either the New York interface is a little easier and maybe better for newer users. Maybe they want to try and provide a different user experience in the different areas.

I'm not totally sure, but I am enjoying the Brazil experience.

Social Network Gaming: Day 20

Like with every game that doesn't end, I am hitting the "whats the point phase" where I have been doing the same micro-management for 20 days now and I really don't feel that I have accomplished anything. At least I have unlocked the English farm in FarmVille and started the sea expedition in City of Wonder. Even though I have some of the golden horseshoes in FrontierVille.

I have been holding off for my friends to send me gifts to finish the land office so I can expand my frontier. I have amassed a worthy amount of coins, but I'm not exactly sure what to build. I can't use the money to finish any of the building I currently have so I don't think my establishment could ever get finished without spending money.

Next Months Hobby Revealed! Freshwater Aquarium

Ever wanted to have a freshwater aquarium? I have, and starting next month I plan to dump time, money, and probably precious hair follicles into having my own freshwater aquarium.

Social Network Gaming: Day 17

So now that I have got a handle of the games, I have decided to purchase $10 in each of the simulations games; FarmVille, FrontierVille, and City of Wonder. When I have time I plan to spend and document how far $10 got me. For now I am trying to do everything without using the money which is proving to be difficult.

It seems like if you have a plethora of friends that play the game, it is relatively easy to skate by without spending much, but if you only have 5-6 friends in the game, that do not play very often, I imagine it can get quite expensive (especially in FrontierVille). At least in City of Wonder you can expand your land without friends for a little while.

I have not been really spending too much time with Mafia Wars other than to do the occasional job or collect from my properties. I have amassed 400 losses for 33 some wins and my pride cannot take much more so I have decided to level up my stealing instead of fighting.



Here is a re-cap of the day: