Hawaii Farm - Epic FAIL

Zynga released a new farm for Farmville - paid access started last week; free access was expected this week, but so far most seem to be still waiting..... yet another slow rollout, which, given the tight timelines and other nonsense associated with the (ridiculous, most of us hate them) quests, puts those who do not have the farm at a huge disadvantage compared to those that do.

If that was the only problem, they could perhaps be forgiven, but OMG have they blown it this time.

It's very appropriate that this new farm is the first that includes water critters like whales and jellyfish and SHARKS. Because yes, indeed, my friends, with the nonsense of this week, Zynga has clearly jumped the shark.

And ripped off and infuriated a whole lot of their still-loyal-through-all-the-crap-to-date customers.

The new farm uses coconuts as currency - so everyone, even those among us who have amassed millions or billions of coins are starting back at 0. And that was fine. BUT apparently some wing nut with NO sense at all decided that people were finding far too many ways to earn coconuts.

They released a special crop that one could only plant by paying - yes, again, not coins, FC, which costs real money - and which paid out coconuts. Oh no That would not do - they took it out of the market altogether and refunded the FC to those who had paid for it.

Imagine the nerve!! Spending money - yes, actual REAL MONEY - to start earning coconuts.

So, they axed the orchids - but at least they gave us our money back.

But that left us with trees and animals - also available for FC. So many people bought those items so that they could continue to earn coconuts, so that when they finally get the new farm, if that ever happens, they would be able to plow plots, expand, grow stuff.... you know... farm.

No no no! That will not do - everyone has to have an even playing field apparently - so they axed earning coconuts on any farm but Hawaii.

SO everyone that paid actual FC - you know, that stuff you get with real actual money? - got ripped off. No refunds this time.

Feels rather like a bait & switch to me... and it is no surpise at all that there are a lot of very, very, very unhappy ex-farmers out here....

But it gets better, eh?

Even those of us that paid to go to Hawaii early now have very very few options for earning coins. Basically, you can plant and harvest. CROPS. For now.

On other farms, you can push trees through ready orchards ...which means not only that those of us with rather iffy attention spans always have something we can be doing, we can be earning coins and growing trees for our friends.

But some customer service extra-ordinaire type decided that we should not be able to do that on the Hawaii farm because we might GASP earn extra coconuts by doing so!!

So now, when you move a tree into a ready orchard, the orchard is no longer ready. Each tree added adds time until the orchard will be ready.

I was not terribly impressed to find this out AFTER I paid FC to grow the damn things to 100% so that I could harvest them.

SO not impressed, Zynga.

Oh, and the other stroke of brilliance - there was one tree that actually produced a fair number of coconuts - 900+ I hear.

Rather than adjust the payout level to something more reasonable, they totally trashed the tree - both the level one and level two gum trees now grown not rainbow gum - they grow Jaca trees. A totally unrelated and not nearly as attractive tree.

Every single person who paid - yes, REAL MONEY DAMMIT - for the level 1 tree so that we could grow the level 2 tree for ourselves and our neighbours - deserves a refund.

Same for those that purchased any of the other formerly-coconut-producing critters, trees, etc.

And if you are not yet convinced that Zynga has jumped the shark with Farmville and deserves to fail (sorry to anyone that actually has invested in their IPO - should'a done some more thorough research first, eh?) ..... the rip offs are apparently not the end of it ....

Now, to further irk and irritate their players, apparently when one does get to the Hawaii farm, you get to start out now with 14,000+ coconuts the way the first paying customers did... or 5,000, the way those who started a bit later did.

From what I'm seeing in the forums and on the feeds, people who go there for free today get to start out with a big fat goose egg. Zero coconuts. No way to earn them, none to start with (can't even farm) - and when you harvest the pens you can build there - have to build there, if you are tyring to do the quests - you are going to get coin, not coconuts.

How is this supposed to be fun, Zynga?

Be damned if you're getting any more of my real actual money. Ridiculous!