Mafia Wars Secret Santa mission ushers in the Holidays for a limited time

For the next five days, Zynga will be ushering in the holiday season in Mafia Wars via the Secret Santa limited time mission. This mission will be available to complete for the next 5 days, however, your own time limit for completing mission will likely not match this overall time limit, so as to allow you to complete the mission multiple times if you so choose (and have time to do so).

The mission requires you to find four mafia members to help you, and you can ask for their help by simply posting a news item to your wall. The possible rewards for this mission are quite varied and are high in number. There are two "Grand" or "rare" prizes associated with this event - a D-07 Proximity Mine worth 70 Attack and 39 Defense points, and a Field Rider motorcycle which has 21 Attack and 71 Defense stats.

There are six uncommon items and six common items available to win. For those unfamiliar with these kinds of special event or timed missions, once it is successfully completed, your pool of participating mob members can receive multiple items from this prize pool, with you earning a slightly bigger portion, since you were the leader, or initiator of the mission.

We're sure this won't be the last time we see something related to the holidays released in Mafia Wars, but it is a nice teaser to tide us over until (if) something bigger does come along.

FarmVille Holiday Tree looks to be returning for 2010

During the Winter Holiday event in 2009, FarmVille players were able to build and expand their very own Holiday Tree in a collection event with friends that saw users passing around wrapped Christmas presents through free gift requests and wall posts. Only once the holidays actually hit did those presents become available for unwrapping, and they account for the many Reindeer, Ornaments, Snowflakes and other decorations that you might have noticed on your veteran friends' farms - those items that aren't available in the store currently.

With the winter holiday season now firmly in place, the question becomes whether or not we'll see a new Holiday Tree released in the game, or whether the tree from 2009 will be making a return. We can now make a pretty strong guess that the latter is indeed the case, as something very interesting has happened to the Holiday 2009 trees that are still on users' farms.

Regardless of how much progress you made on your tree last year (that is, whether or not you reached the 100 present limit), all of that progress has been erased, and removed from the tree, reverting it back to its original state (that being the tree image in this post). Hovering over the tree still shows your present progress from last year (in my case "0/100 Presents Inside"), but the tree is simply tiny.

As of this writing, the tree is unable to buy in the store, if you're a new player who doesn't yet have one, and there are no gifts to be found to send on the free gifts page. So for now, this all seems to just be a preliminary step by Zynga to prepare the game for the "re-release" of the tree, so that all users are on an even footing.

We'll be sure to let you know when the Holiday Tree 2010 collection event starts in the game, so keep checking back with us for more.

UPDATE: After reporting on this development yesterday, we've heard reports, and have witnessed personally, the Holiday Trees from 2009 going through seemingly random bouts of being complete, and being small (as in the picture above). We'll be sure to let you know when there is a definitive answer to this conundrum, so keep checking back.

FrontierVille Sneak Peek: Winter Holiday Pink Tree, Happy Holidays Sign, & Sad 'Lil Tree

If you thought the first real wave of Winter Holiday decorations in FrontierVIlle would be the end of the game's celebration for this year, think again, as we've come across some new leaked images, revealing a trio of additional decorations that may or may not be coming to FrontierVille in the near future.

The items are the Pink Tree (similar to FarmVIlle's Pink Tree decoration), a lighted Happy Holidays Sign (which will match nicely with the lights that can be placed on the ground, or with the lighted "Tend Here" sign), and a Sad 'Lil Tree, giving a nod to Charlie Brown's classic tree with a single red ornament.

No word yet as to whether or not these items will officially be released in the game, or where you'll be able to find them. They could be mission rewards, they could be available to purchase in the store, or they could even be free gifts (granted, that's highly unlikely) - so keep that in mind.

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.