Podcast Transcript 2010-12-17

Hey Farmers and welcome to this week's installment of the official Farmville Podcast. My name is Lexilicious and I am here to bring you all the latest news and information from around Farmville from Zynga. This week, we will be discussing our latest releases, I'll be sharing some information about our new community events, and everyone will be getting a sneak peek about what's coming to Farmville in the near future. Now, the Farmville team has seen some creative farms popping up since the release of our limited edition winter holiday items, and we figure it's only fair that the jolliest farms get the recognition that they deserve, that's right folks, it's time for you to show us your deocrating skills once again, this holiday season, we want to see your farms at their merriest. Submit photos of your winter themed farms from December 16th thru December 31st for a chance to win 500 Farm Cash and 500,000 coins. If you are interested in participating in this event, please make sure to visit the Farmville forums for more details. In addition to our Winter Holiday Decorating Contest, we have another special event coming your way in the very near future, soon we will be watching our very first Farmville themed Winter Holiday Greeting Card Contest. Do you like to draw? Do you consider yourself an artist with Microsoft paint or photo shop? Can you create witty Farmville themed puns? If so, this contest is for you, like our baking contest (dessert contest), creating a winning greeting card will earn you 1,000 farm cash and 1,000,000 coins and any limited edition Farmville item of your choice. So make sure to keep an eye out for this new contest in the coming weeks. Last Friday (on Friday, December 10th), we released the new Holiday Tree, which will allow you to send gifts to your neighbours and redeem for special prizes. Keeping with the spirit of the holidays, you can also give presents to your friends that they can open on December 25th. The Holiday Tree works like any other item-gathering style events in Farmville, you will acquire holiday gifts through various methods and use them to put them underneath your Holiday Tree. As you accumulate holiday gifts under your tree, you can redeem them for special prizes like the Frozen Fence or Snow Stallion. Giving up this feature has been out for about a week now, we know everyone had already accumulated a large number of gifts under their tree, because of this, we had released 6 new redeemable items for the Holiday Tree on Wednesday, December 15th. Keep on collecting and redeeming gifts from your neighbours to get the new Sneezy Sheep, Ice House, Kodiak Cub, Frozen Fantasy, Arctic Fox and the Tinsel Tree. You will also find a very special present from Zynga in your tree that can be opened on the 25th of December with the other gifts (presents) given to you by your neighbours. Now, winter is well and truly here, and what better way to make use of this special time of the year by engaging in snowball fights and building snowmen? We all know that a snowball fight isn't much fun by yourself. To participate in this feature, you'll need to get your neighbours involved. You can start the fight simply by visiting your neighbour's farm. You'll see a pop-up window asking if you want to throw a snowball at them, to do this, simply click on the Share button, You'll be prompted to post a snowball fight notice to your feed, you'll see a on-screen animation for a snowball hitting them, or does it, there is a chance that you could miss your neighbour or hit someone else by accident. Whenever someone gets hit, they have the option to throw a snowball back by clicking on the retaliate button on the feed post. You will be able to throw 1 snowball per neighbour per day. But, that's not all, if you get hit by a snowball and you retaliate, you'll get a pile of snow in return. You can use this pile to snow to build a snowman. You'll get the initial frame for the snowman for free the first time you play Farmville after the update, where you will be immediately entered into placement mode, you can place the snowman on your farm now, or you can choose to place it in your gift box for use later. The snowman is not level locked, so any player can use it. The Snowman is essentially a 3-tier constructible building (like the Haunted House and Winter Workshop), but you won't be using regular building parts for it, you will need special winter-themed items for this event. Click on the Snowman frame, and then select look inside to see what you need. Once a day, you can also be able to harvest the snowman for watering cans, the higher the tier of your snowman, the more watering cans you can get out of it. Both the Snowball Fight and the Snowman events end on January 13. After that date, players will not be able to throw snowballs, or add parts to their snowman. You will be able to store your snowman at that time. The past few weeks were also filled with great new limited edition winter holiday items that all of our players had seem to enjoy. Your original favorites from this theme had made another appearance, along with some great new items to add to your collection. Winter Holiday items can now be found in the marketplace for a limited time only, so make sure to grab some before they disappear. Alright, and on that note, let's go ahead and get to the coming soon segment of this week's podcast. So we had a lot to talk about this week, but first up is something that should make our pig lover's quite happy. Pigpen Expansion will be coming soon, and this extra space will allow you to hunt for more truffles, accumulate more slop and store up to 40 pigs. The New Year's ball drop feature will also make appearance soon, which will give you the ability to invite your neighbours to your new year's party. The more neighbours you attend your party, the better rewards you will get, some of your rewards you can look forward to are a new crop, a new pony and some new clothes for your avatar. And lastly, we have the winter countdown that will start sometime after December 25th. Every day you log in, you'll have a chance to ask for, and give items from our old winter holiday theme to your neighbours, each day will be a new item, and if you manage to collect all 12 of them, you will unlock a very special new animal. Now, before I get out of here, I want to give you guys a quick update on when the 28 X 28 expansion will be available for coins. Currently, we are looking at releasing this feature sometime after the new year, so please hang tight and we'll have this for you as soon as we can. Alright farmers, that's it for me this week, please know that due to the holidays, our next podcast will be on January 7th. The Farmville team would like to wish all of our players a safe, and happy holiday season. Again, my name is Lexilicious and I would like to thank everybody for tuning in this week. Happy Holidays and Happy Farming Everybody!