Ernst Blofeld has demanded that I, Scott, account for the considerable time I've spent in building his Mafia Wars Loot List and explain just what am I doing to further his goal of world domination! After spending hours in the torture rack I finally agreed to write this page and all he did was give me that evil, snide, grin of his. So where do all of your donations go? Besides buying me a beer once in a while? And what exactly are the future plans? Well, here goes:
- Every Monday and Wednesday morning at about 3 a.m., my time, Zynga releases new loot. I get this loot into the loot list as quickly as I can.
On Fridays a new $10,000 item or weekly shipment item is released, and again it has to go into the loot list as quickly as possible.
- Zynga likes to change things up, they correct misspellings, or sometimes even misspell something that was correct (lol), and change the stats or even move
a loot item from weapon to armor. So I have to keep on my toes, monitoring what's going on, and keeping the database up to date. Blofeld is very 'anal' about this and has threatened me with death if I screw it up.
- Provide technical support (limited). Usually this is to help people the first time they use the loot list.
- Play new cities (very very quickly). There will be many new items in the Mafia Stores and new drops - they need to be added to the database immediately or else.
- Add the loot from Zynga's Weekend/Holiday Events. This has always has been 8 items and usually takes a couple hours. Starting at 3 a.m. my time.
- And finally - add new features as people/operatives tell me what else they would like the loot list to do for them in support of Blofeld's world domination goals (What is it with him?). Here's the current list of features that are going in:
- Boosts A separate tab on the front page - [Weapons][Armor][Vehicles][Special][Boosts] [DONE]
- Today's Loot A box that appears when you first come to the loot list for the day. It shows what loot has been added in the past 24 hours. You get to vote
on whether you like it or not. Shows all the information about the item and a thumbs up or down from Scott, Sunny, and accumulatively all of you.
- Printable Opens up a new window with all items in a simple format so you can print it out. Helps you to keep a record of what items you are looking for.[DONE]
- Help A complete help system. [IN PROGRESS]
- Collector's Checkbox A check box on the main window that "keeps" at least one of each item in your inventory from showing up in the giftable/saleable list. [DONE]
- Percentiles Replaces the percentages in the player comparisons. The percentages are not very informative and only tell you how your results compare to others. Percentiles will actually tell you "You are better than 78% of the players at your level". [DONE]
- Trading Page Make it easy to compare trades and make offers. This means there will be a combat mode and a trading mode for the loot list. This will show you
how your proposed trade will affect your inventory and let you know if it's a good trade or a bad trade (from an equipment's stat point of view). This one should get Blofeld off my back - though if he thinks he's getting a cut he's got another think coming!
- Reorganize City Pages So that they are by episode (custom layout for the city). This should help people plan their way through each city. [DONE]
- Search The lists are getting long. Add a search box to find a loot item.
- Recommendations What is it that you should be trying to acquire? Provides a list based on an analysis of your inventory of the items you should acquire as soon as possible.
In addition we, Scott and Sunny, host events every few weekends. Which ties us to our chairs, though we try to break our time into shifts. One of our upcoming events is highly interactive and will be ALOT of fun!
So you can see there is a lot going on here at SPECTRE headquarters. Blofeld himself has threatened several times to throw me in the shark tank if I don't get more done. The best thing anyone can do is just send a donation - even a small one. I recently heard that a lot of people don't donate because they don't know how much is appropriate. They are worried that it will be too small and insult someone or not make a difference
or too big. Honestly, we get donations of $1 (yes, and Paypal takes 43 cents) - but that's ok. Occasionally we get big donations, above $50! Those are sweet! I get to have steak with my beer! :) But most are $5, $10, or $20. Every single donation is greatly appreciated and helps me out. So if your thinking about Starbucks today - how about, just today, send a donation instead of spending $4.95 on caffeine. :) BTW: You don't need a Paypal account - and Paypal won't force you to set one up if you just want to use a credit card.
