July 17, 2010

Like many people, I resisted Farmville for the longest time. I felt it was ruining Facebook, and wasn’t all that keen on Facebook to start with. But when Farmville was released for the iPhone, I figured I’d give it a go.

I will say one thing – it’s beautiful. And it does take advantage of the persistent state offered by iOS4. Unfortunately, it is in a persistent state even when you’ve closed it down. It doesn’t sync properly with the web version – which you are forced to use in order to really take advantage of the game. For instance, you can’t look inside your barn or beehive from the iPhone version to see what materials you still need, or request those materials.

I had been playing happily on my iPhone for a few days when I noticed all the Farmville requests on my Facebook page. I wanted to clear them out, but you have to acknowledge each one separately, and of course, since I’d already accepted all the gifts from my iPhone, each time I clicked yes I got a message telling me I’d already accepted. Duh!

So after doing some routine farming on the website via my pc one morning, I decided to check in on my iPhone to see if there were any of those little goodies that are iPhone specials. Despite the fact that there was nothing in my “gift box” when I closed the web page down, I discovered 38 items on my iPhone. Say what?! I had to acknowledge all of them. What a time waster! And I had accepted all but 3 items on the website already. There doesn’t seem to be a way to keep iPhone/web items separate.

Zynga’s servers just don’t sync. You have to do it all manually, and that really destroys the experience. I even had to acknowledge a neighbour request on my iPhone this morning…someone who has been my neighbour on the web for several days.

My best friend, Tiffany, has played Farmville from day one. She was stunned when she saw me finally in there, and I had to explain I only did it cause it was available on my iPhone. Tiffany loves it cause it’s relaxing and she can do a little when she wants. But I’m not finding it relaxing cause I’m spending so much time manually syncing my iPhone and the web version. It’s becoming more of a frustration than anything, and I’m starting to be sorry I ever got started.

If you want to play Farmville, play on the web. If you want a relaxing farm game to play on your iPhone, try Farm Story or even Tap Farm.

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