Once I Was King – Now I Am Free

Ok, Ok, I give up! I surrender! Seems to be the latest sentiment of many players in Mafia Wars as of late. And that sentiment is showing in the DAU.

On Fiday, June 8, 2012, I made this post; Time For Pac Member Changes Drawing Near. Within that post I informed you that “during the past 3 months we have seen a Mafia Wars low in the DAU of 380,000 on May 29, 2012.” This was the image of the DAU in that post;

It took just 3 days to shatter that low in the DAU. Here is today’s DAU numbers;

We now sit at 360,000 Daily Active Users And more and more families are looking more and more like the following when they run their Family Managers;

There are a multitude of reasons why many players have quit playing Mafia Wars. The reasons include the bugs, glitches, and issues within the game itself (As one example shown below of images not showing making it impossible to play at all);

To others the reason may be the impossible to complete features such as Family Progression or even the Family Module itself;

The latest mass exodus from the game could be contributed (at least in part) to the ‘New’ VIP Membership Benefits.

Why? Because all this program has succeeded at doing is segregating the player base. The only true advantages that are being gained by the release of this program are the fact that Zynga is making a ton of money from the program and is likely beginning to see less stress on their server loads because players ARE quitting. And NO, they aren’t going and playing Farmville (Which IS STILL KICKING MAFIA WARS ASS);

The VIP Memberships is just more proof that Zynga does not care about how large a player base Mafia Wars has.

The only questions remaining are how low will the DAU fall to before it reaches bottom? How many of those who do spend money will quit also when the player base drops so low that they are only competing with themselves? How long will Zynga continue to update Mafia Wars? Will YOU still be around to find out the answers to these questions or will you be singing “Seasons In The Sun” to this game?