Answers to Your Questions

YoVillian Sarah posted the followin email she got from the YoVille Support on the boards. Hope it helps!

Hi Yovillians,

Because the game is growing so fast, we are seeing a major increase in emails. We are still in the process of increasing our staff to handle these, so for the time being I am going to send this email to answer the most common questions we receive and a lot of how to questions . Also this email should be mainly used to report technical questions/problems in the game. Please keep other emails to a minimum.
We believe your email falls into this category so please scan through and find you topic and our answer. Please also check the HELP&RULES section as many questions are answered there. If your question is featured there you will most likely get this response too. The last bit is for everyone so scroll down and read it please.

-MY WALLS AND/OR FLOORS TURNED WHITE/OR THE NEW WALLPAPER/FLOORING IS NOT WORKING! - We know, and it should be fixed soon. Sorry for the confusion this may have caused you. We are working on something new for you guys and it looks like it created an error with the current walls and floors. Like I said it will be fixed really soon, hang in there. You wont lose any items because of this error.

-CAN’T CHAT OR ENTER A NAME WHEN CREATING AN AVATAR: Please send us a message with “Typing Issue” in the subject and let us know what operating system and browser version/type you are using please. We are working on this problem now. It’s only affecting a small (percentage wise) amount of players so that makes it harder to find and fix the problem. It doesn’t make it any less important, just harder to fix. Hopefully it won’t take too long to fix, but right now I don’t have a time frame on when it will be done.
-I ACCEDENTALLY DELETED MY YOVILLE ACCOUNT, HOW DO I GET IT BACK: Just re-ad the game, it will look like it is going to give you a new account and new character but if you go through the steps it gives you back your old account and avatar.

-EDIT BAR WON'T LOAD- Some people are having problems editing their rooms right now and we are aware of the problem. It is on our list to fix however we are fixing several things right now so it may take awhile. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully it won't take too long to fix.

-GENDER CHANGE: Please send me your Facebook or MySpace id number and I will reset your account for you. The id number can be found by going to your Facebook or MySpace account and clicking to view your profile. Copy the whole URL at the top, and send it to me. Please remember that this will cause you to lose any coins, or items that you currently have. When you send your id number you will be put on a list to be reset, depending on the volume of these requests it may take a few days. Just check your account often, you will be able to tell when it has been reset, there is no need to email back. Also, if your id number is not included in your email the email will be deleted.

-NOT GETTING COINS FOR SENDING INVITES: We don't offer coins for sending invites, we just need to update the bank. We used to offer coins for invites on the Facebook version but we are no longer allowed to. The graphic for the store came from that version. We never offered coins for invites on the MySpace version as MySpace does not allow us to. Sorry for the confusion.

-YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM CREATING EVENTS AND DON’T THINK YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING INAPPROPRIATE: The filter stops thousands of very bad events from being posted every day, however we are always happy to check your account and see why you were banned from events. If the filter banned you for something that was not inappropriate then we will be happy to unban you. Please send me your Facebook or MySpace id number and I will check your account for you. The id number can be found by going to your Facebook or MySpace account and clicking to view your profile. Copy the whole URL at the top, and send it to me. If your id number is not included than we will not be able to look up your account and your email will be deleted.

-I JUST BOUGHT SOMETHING AND IT HASN’T SHOWN UP IN MY INVENTORY: In all of these cases that I have checked the item is either already in the inventory and you just need to refresh your page to see it, or it was never actually purchased (as in coins were never deducted for the item). I have checked this for hundreds of people and there has never been a bug where someone actually pays for an item and it never shows up.

-CAN’T EDIT YOUR ROOM AFTER BUYING CABIN ITEMS: We found the error, it has been fixed.. Everyone should be able to edit again. Sorry for the frustration. If you are still having this issue feel free to email us again, as it is probably a different problem.

-CAN’T LOG ON/ CREATE AN AVATAR/ OR IT FREEZES (OR FREEZES IN GENERAL) WHEN YOU LOAD ITEMS IN STORES/APARTMENTS ECT: Since there are several things that can cause these issues, your issue may or may not be coming from the game itself. Getting stuck at 74% usually means there is a firewall problem.
You may try installing/reinstalling flash here:

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

And here’s a link to disabling most firewalls that may be helpful:

https://help.expedient.com/general/disable_firewall.shtml

Please make sure that you are using the newest available version of whatever browser you use. If you are using an older version it may be the cause of loading and freezing issues.
Don't worry, we know "some" of these issues are in the game and not always issues on your side, we are looking into that too. Please be patient though.

-CREW MONEY/ I HAVE X AMOUNT OF PEOPLE IN MY CREW AND I’M STILL JUST GETTING 200 COINS: For Facebook users, please read the whole paragraph that comes up, not just the first line. The first line says 200 coins, the second line tells the bonus added for the amount of crew members you have. Every single time I have checked someone’s account who claims they have enough crew to earn more than 200 coins but aren’t, I find that they are earning the correct amount. If you still believe that you are not earning the correct amount than please email you player id number so that we can look you up and check it out.

-CREW: On MySpace and can't scroll down to invite all your friends?: It should be fixed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

-CREW: There has been some confusion with the crew invites lately and we have looked into some of the problems. There are two main things happening.
A) People saying “I joined through a friends crew invite but the aren’t on my crew” or “My friend joined through my invite and they are not on my crew”
This is happening because when you send an invite to a friend it then takes them out of the “invite box” or category of people you can send invites to in the future. Some players have been clicking to “view sent requests” and then clicking to “remove request” on people that they have already invited. Basically it puts those people that you have already invited back in the invite box so that you can invite them again. When this is done it deletes your connection to the invite that you already sent. So if your friend joins YoVille from an invite that you have removed (or if you joined from an invite your friend has removed) you will not be added to each other’s crews. If people stop deleting these requests and resending them it should take care of the problem.
B) People saying “I keep showing an invite on my crew page but when I click on it , it takes me back to my Facebook page and there is no invite”
There are two things causing this: The above stated, when people delete their request for people that already have YoVille it can cause the invite to show up for the player that received it but since the link to it is destroyed when the other user removed their request it just takes them to the Facebook page.
The other cause of this is when people click “ignore” on a request, a person that sends requests, or ignore all requests for this game. Any of those can cause these dead links.

Basically there wouldn’t be any problems on the crews if people would stop clicking to remove their requests or clicking ignore.
If you have a dead link (one that doesn’t connect to an invite) you can uninstall and reinstall the game to get rid of it. You will not lose your items or coins.

-I WANT TO BE A MODERATOR: Sorry, we don't use players as moderators anymore. We had too many problems with people abusing the power. Also, anyone claiming to be YoVille police are fakes, report them.
-I WANT TO BE A TESTER –Sorry, we no longer use players as testers. Also this email should be mainly used to report technical questions/problems in the game. Please keep other emails to a minimum.
-HOW DO I CHANGE MY NAME: While logged into YoVille click on the “account settings” tab and there is an option to change your players name.

-MY FRIENDS KEEP RATING MY ROOM AND IT WON'T GO UP: Each player can only rate a room once, so if your friends have already rated it and try again you will not see a difference. The ratings are not broken.

-I WAS SCAMMED: Please read the Help&Rules section that warns against scammers, also a lot of you are choosing to ignore the big red pop up that says a trade looks like a scam and then email us saying you got scammed. We put a warning there for a reason. When people claim to double your money and you put it in and they put nothing in, a warning comes up.. that should make it obvious that you are about to be scammed and shouldn't click accept. Also, these trades where people are claiming an item is something (wood floors but it's really a wood table), you can scroll over the items in the trade box and it tells you exactly what it is. Be cautious with your coins if they are important to you. We ban tons of scammers, but the only way to get rid of them is to stop falling for the scams.

-HALLOWEEN ITEMS/ COSTUMES/: In the store the costumes stated that they would expire on Nov 1st. On that date users will no longer be able to wear the costumes.

We did however change our minds about completely taking the costumes away. Originally it was meant to be more like a costume rental just for this month. Since this was not clear to users we have decided to let you keep the costumes in your inventory for next year. You will not be able to wear it on a daily basis though. We will be hosting special costume party days in YoVille where everyone will be able to wear their costumes. This will let you use it sometimes during the year, while also rewarding our long time users and making this year’s costumes into collectibles that only current users will have.

You will not be able to trade the costumes after Nov 1st to prevent scamming issues.

We know that some people will still be upset, but we never intended the costumes to be worn all year round and are not going to change this.
Halloween decorations, pumpkins, and wallpaper will not expire. You can keep them and use them whenever you want.

-I HAVE A MYSPACE YOVILLE AND A FACEBOOK YOVILLE, HOW CAN I COMBINE THEM or I HAVE FRIENDS ON MYSPACE BUT I USE FACEBOOK HOW DO I ADD THEM TO MY CREW? : At this time there is not a way to do this. You can’t crew request someone that is on MySpace if you are on Facebook and vice versa. You can chat and trade with users that are logging in through a different site than you though.

-HOW TO CARVE A PUMPKIN: Select to edit your room, take the pumpkin out of your inventory, put it in a room, save your changes. After you save the room, double click on the pumpkin and begin carving.

-WHERE IS MY BLACK SHAG CARPET?: The black shag is a carpet, not a rug. This means that it shows up in the flooring section of your inventory (that little tab that says floor and wall coverings) and covers the whole floor of the room when applied. It may have been confusing since this was featured in the Halloween section instead of the YoDepot.
-IT SAYS I CAN’T EARN ANY MORE GAME COINS TODAY: We allow people to make 200 coins over 24 hours not an actual day, to be fair to all our users in other time zones. So if you played yesterday at 9pm and won 200 coins and came back the next day at 6pm you still wouldn’t be able to win any more coins until 9pm.

-TELEPORT DOORS/ HOW TO AND ISSUES WITH SOME NOT WORKING:
The teleport door is used to teleport between two apartments. When you buy a pair of doors you need to put one door in your apartment and trade the other door to a friend. Once your friend puts the door in their apartment both of the apartments will be connected through the teleport doors.
For most people the doors are working fine, for a few they aren’t working at all. This is on our list to fix but it may take awhile. Though it is important, fixing log on problems and the ability to chat are higher priority.

-CAN I HAVE A ROOMMATE/SHARE APARTMENT: The only way to do this is to use the teleport doors to connect two apartments. There is not a way to share one apartment. Sorry.
-NOTIFICATIONS: Sorry but there is not a way for you to turn out the notifications that are sent out. However, if you or your friends feel like you are getting too many they can be controlled through your page settings on Facebook.
-I KNOW HOW TO TRADE BUT IT’S NOT LOADING FOR ME- We are working on that problem, it is affecting only a small portion of our users and we are not sure why yet. Hopefully we can get it fixed pretty soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.
-CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO TRADE: To trade with another player you need to be in an apartment and then click on the other player, and select to trade. Once they accept your trade invite a trade box will pop up for items to be added. There are also instructions near the bottom of the screen once a trade has been opened. When trading be just as careful with your YoVille money as you would with real money.
-CAN I GIVE GIFTS TO MY FRIENDS?: Currently we do not have a “gifting” feature, however you can use the trade feature to give items to another user. We may add a way to leave gifts in the future.
-HOW DO I CHANGE MY CHARACTERS NAME? : There is a tab that says “account settings” just click on it and there is an option to change your name.
-WHY CAN’T I SELL MY STARTER ITEMS: Since we gave you the starter items for free, they have no coin value and cannot be sold or traded. MySpace users are not supposed to be able to do this either, we just had a delay in updating this in the MySpace version.

-VIP: VIP is not available for anyone yet. We are still working on it and hope to release it soon. We put some items in the store listed as VIP and nobody was supposed to be able to buy them. Unfortunately there was an error that allowed those items to be purchased by many players. Since so many people had already purchased them we took the VIP label off and allowed everyone to be able to purchase these items. The only item that is still labeled VIP is the males robe and some of the (men’s and women’s) new jackets. You may see some people out there with the robe but they only have it due to an error that made it available for a few hours. Nobody should have the new VIP jackets though. Nobody has VIP status yet. We will announce how to become VIP when it is ready to be released. You cannot buy VIP status or cheats from any other player claiming to have it, as it is not available to anyone yet. We are very sorry for all the confusion this has caused.

-IDEAS FOR YOVILLE/ WHY DON’T YOU HAVE THIS OR THAT?: We always appreciate player ideas, and are currently very busy making new additions for YoVille. We do read through your ideas that are posted on the forums also. Some are already in the plans, some are not possible or just not something that we think should be done in YoVille. I can’t give out details for what we are making ahead of time. Stay tuned for the upcoming things, hopefully you will like them all.

-WHEN WILL THIS AREA/ OR AN ITEM BE RELEASED: We don’t give out release dates ahead of time. We have several reasons for this. It ruins any surprises, and also very often a release date will change. Our plans change when we have unexpected errors that take up extra time fixing them, or if we decide to add something that wasn’t previously in our plans.

-BUDDY LIST/IMPORT BUTTON PROBLEMS: We know there are a lot of issues with the buddy list and import button. Unfortunately there is not an easy or fast way for us to fix these particular errors. It is going to require us to do a major system upgrade in order to fix it. We do have plans of doing this, though it will be awhile before we are able to. Sorry for the inconvenience.

-LASTLY THIS PART IS FOR EVERYONE:
If this somehow did not cover your topic at all feel free to email back, please put your topic in the subject line of your email.
Please do not email back saying "it's still not fixed" If it's not fixed we already know that, are working on it, and sending another email is not going to speed it up at all. We aren't ignoring you guys, sometimes these things just take longer to fix than we want. It's not always simple, and please remember that we are working on several issues at once including things that are not listed here.

Thank you for your patience, we apologize for the frustration and hope it gets worked out soon.
Hopefully we won’t have to do these mass email replies very often. I’d much prefer to be able to talk to each of you individually, it’s just not possible to do right now without it taking a week or more to get back to everyone. Sorry.

- YoVille support

***********

Zak-YVL