World of Farm Town

I think it was about a little more than a month ago that I was invited by my Father to play the Facebook application Farm Town and since even my mom has gotten into the act, It looked like at least a decent Facebook game to play while you’re bored so I joined up.

Farm Town Marketplace

For those who don’t know, Farm Town is an application in Facebook that allows players to play the role of a farmers building up a farm by planting and harvesting crops and slowly expanding and beautifying your property. You can interact with other players and visit other farms to do odd jobs for people to earn money.

So far I’m level 18 and my mom and dad are higher level than me. But what I realized about that game is that it’s really addicting… like World of Warcraft! In fact, it seems to have a few loose similarities with World of Warcraft and that’s what inspired me to write this piece.

First of all Farm Town is a social game and could even be considered a simple MMO if you take into consideration all the players that you can interact with in the game. You can happily play the game on your own but it’s easier and more fun to play when you interact with people and get your friends to join the game. Sounds a lot like WoW doesn’t it?

Farm Town is also a game where you go up in levels to gain access to better things. In WoW it’s things like talents, spells, mounts and such. In Farm Town going up in levels means bigger property, access to better crops, ponds, houses and such. If in WoW we see all the guys spamming LFG SM or LF Tank H-Nexus or basically anything that players need, in Farm Town you also have the spammers in the Marketplace looking to get hired by other players to harvest their crops. Hiring another player to harvest for you doesn’t cost the one hiring anything and selling those crops sell for more than if you were to harvest them yourself. In the meantime, the one harvesting gets money so it’s a win-win for both parties. So you always see these guys spamming the chat looking for work just like players spamming chat in WoW.

I guess that’s why Farm Town has a certain appeal to me over other Facebook games. It’s like my WoW away from WoW (and sometimes even during WoW, when I’m not doing much in game). If WoW felt like your were always farming – for money, gear, mats and such, then at least here’s a game that really is into farming!