Click to Harvest!

Mafia Wars developer Zynga kicked off the holiday season a few days ago with the introduction of a new Secret Santa mission. The task is labeled as a “Secret Mission” but it doesn’t really seem that secret to us, since it is advertised right on the Mafia Wars home page. Secret or not, there is plenty of exclusive loot up for grabs, and that’s what truly matters, right?

To complete the mission, players will need the help of four of their friends. By making a Facebook wall post, players can give friends the opportunity to fill in as a Demolitions Expert, Bagman, Driver, or Electronics Expert. Players can also automatically fill any of the four slots by paying 10 Reward Points.

Once the roles are filled and the mission completed, the exclusive loot is then divided among the participants. The two rare items are a Field Raider vehicle (21 Attack, 71 Defense) and a D-07 Proximity Mine weapon (70 Attack, 39 Defense).

Mafia Wars developer Zynga introduced a new mystery crate today, with all the loot following an underwater theme. As with all Mafia Wars mystery crates, players can buy one for 12 RP, or a three pack for 35 RP. Players have a 10% chance of obtaining a rare item, 30% chance uncommon, and 60% chance of receiving a common item. The new items are:

Weapons
Aquatic Rifle – 75 ATK, 41 DEF (Rare)
Diver’s Knife – 60 ATX, 33 DEF (Uncommon)
Limpet Mine – 29 ATK, 64 DEF (Uncommon)

Armor
Diving Gear – 56 ATK, 26 DEF (Common)
Sonar Buoy – 37 ATK, 74 DEF (Rare)
Weight Vest – 34 ATK, 57 DEF (Common)

Vehicles
Dive Scooter – 27 ATK, 59 DEF (Uncommon)

Animals
Killer Whale – 27 ATK, 56 DEF (Common)

Mafia Wars developer Zynga has kicked off the game’s latest challenge mission! Players can now travel to Mumbai, India to make a killing at the Bollywood box office

This new Mumbai mission works very similarly to previous Mafia Wars challenge missions. Players will need to add one new friend to their Mafia to gain access, regardless of how many players are already in their crew. Once Mumbai has been unlocked, players have a total of three weeks to complete the challenge mission’s three chapters. Each chapter has an exclusive item reward.

Players will need to progress slowly to keep the heat off them, and play with patience, if they hope to succeed.

Mafia Wars developer Zynga is asking players to take a survey, to better understand what they like and dislike about the game’s current player vs. player combat system. Unlike most requests for player feedback, this survey is fairly lengthy – nearly 25 questions. Perhaps Zynga is contemplating a major Mafia Wars PvP revamp?

Most of the questions revolve around the number and frequency of PvP attacks. Zynga is specifically asking players how many times they think one player should be able to attack another, over specific periods of time.

Players can participate in the survey by clicking this link.

Zynga’s marketing and promotions department is becoming more and more fond of big stunts, it seems. First the company announces that it is giving away over $100,000 worth of Island Cash to one lucky Treasure Isle player, and now the company has announced that it is going to blow up an armored truck, to promote Mafia Wars: Las Vegas. Yes, a real armored truck.

Details can be found on Zynga’s official Mafia Wars blog. Basically, once 10 million Mafia Wars players have visited Las Vegas, Zynga is going to take a 9000 pound truck and drive it out to the Nevada desert, fill it with dynamite, and then blow it sky high.

Mafiawars.com currently has a counter showing how many players have visited Vegas. As of this moment it is at 3,000,000 even. Once it hits the big 10 million mark… kaboom!

Zynga also announced that one Mafia Wars: Las Vegas player is going to be chosen at random to win a $25,000 prize, and that every week 10 players who have visited Vegas will win custom Mafia Wars iPads.

The armored truck explosion is a neat stunt to be sure, but we can’t help but think if Zynga skipped the pyrotechnics, they could be giving away two $25,000 prizes, instead of one. We knew Zynga was making loads of cash, but who knew they had enough money to literally burn?