We Rule, We Farm & We City… We Thoughts.

As much as I love playing on We rule, there isn’t much challenge when you are sitting on the last level so I for one was looking forward to We Farm for a change of scenario a little…  And I love seeing the new content being added every week on We Rule and now We Farm.

But if I was very excited about ngmoco releasing We Farm, that excitement was short lived for some reasons…

I can see two main types of players on We Rule and We Farm: the very competitive players and the non competitive ones (like me). The competitive players are the ones who build 100s of shops and decor items only to be in the wall of fame… JAG has the competitive edge even though he now only plays We Rule occasionally. He still enjoys being ahead of me in games and is doing a great job on We Farm for now.

Technerdogist who is in the top 100 We Rule players on the leaderboard and who happens to be in Canada as well, therefore got to play We Farm before us but never got into it: ” I maxed out on TapFarm and We Farm is not much different. No Replay incentive.”

Gameplay is basically the same as We Rule but there are quite a few new additions. First of, on We Farm players earn more gold coins and xp points on other players farm instead of your own which I think is good as it encourages the social side of the game but does not obviously slow down the competitive players.

There is no difference with the crops except on We Farm none of them are big earners so far. The lettuce is probably your best bet – if you can check it every hours that is. Content is being added on a regular basis so I would think at some point we will get better crops. Ngmoco brought the Primate House available for a limited time only: I quite like the idea of  “limited time” only items but I am not sure about only being able to buy with Gro…

Like on We Rule we have buildings but ngmoco added the farm animals. We Farm rule of thumbs: if you want to earn gold coins go for the buildings, if you want to earn xp go for the animals.

The animals are a bit tricky since you have to “pet” them enough to gain a 50/50 chance to become a blue ribbon winner which will allow other players  to place an order on your animals. The happier they are, the more coins/xp you will gain when sold at the fair before you get the blue ribbon. The “petting” part which shows up in the form of a heart above the animal, is quite annoying in my opinion. You can most certainly use Gro which is the equivalent of Mojo on We Rule but, but it requires a LOT of Gro.

I can see a lot of effort made by ngmco on We Farm to slow players down therefore making the gameplay last longer. But it still raises one little question in my mind… Did ngmoco made Gro difficult to get to slow players down or to earn extra money in the hope that people will desperately spend real cash to buy extra Gro? One has to wonder…

Ngmoco is quite generous with Mojo give-aways on We Rule but not so much on We Farm. Every level, we only get 4 Gro which to me is a joke considering the amount needed just to make one animal 100% happy. Recently ngmoco started to offer free Gro for downloading & trialling free apps but those apps were offered with We Rule so if you have never played We Rule you are in luck but for players like me we get nothing

I also noticed after planting a few bushes and trees that they are now locked. I thought I had to wait to level up to get them unlocked but I have leveled a few times since and they are still locked. Was this to stop players to plant 100s of them on their farm as a strategy to level up quickly? It was probably good thinking on ngmoco’s part but what about little me and other players in the same boat? I feel we are getting penalized for the people that already have 100s of those on their farms and that is not really fair, is it?

The limit of 35 transactions on We rule & We Farm is the combined number of orders you have placed and received. This means you could place 15 orders and receive 20 orders to stay within the limit. Once you go over this limit you will not be able to place orders in other Kingdoms/Farms and other players will not be able to place orders in your Kingdom/Farm. I can see a point but not really… I would rather see a limit on the number of building/decor/animal allowed to be built on one Kingdom or Farm and allow players to order more from other people’s Kingdoms/Farms which would help keep the game sociable. JAG says that building a lot is a strategy to gain quick xp points.

When I first started to write this post, there was only 35 levels on We Rule, an extra 5 have just been added so we now have 40 and I am not even there yet!

We Farm stops at level 30 so far and JAG said the xp count stops but the money is still adding up. Like on xbox live, the Plus network has Achievements. If the achievements on We Rule were pretty easy, the last 2 on We Farm might be a bit more involved: one achievement is for reaching 500 000 gold coins, and the other is for reaching 1 000 000 coins, which might explains why the money is still adding up at level 30 as earning anything on We Farm is far more difficult than on We Rule.

Later this year, We City will launch for both iPhone and iPad and it will be interesting to see what more ngmco will bring to the gameplay so that it does not look like a complete skinned We Rule version. To earn cash and xp in We City, players will build factories to create and sell various goods ranging from action figures and video games to potato chips and boats as opposed to the We Rule/We Farm’s crops. There will be Zap instead of Mojo and Gro.

We Thoughts… We Rule, We Farm & We City, what are your thoughts?