FarmVille New Year's Eve Ball Dropping Woes; Strategy Guide

Let's just get it out of the way: yes the title of this post is humorous, but there really doesn't seem to be another way to phrase it.

At any rate, as I posted earlier, the reward for the New Year's Eve ball drop is a free level up. The problem is that FarmVille players just can't get the ball to drop.

There are two reasons why your new year's eve ball timer will not start:

1) The server or game is not recognizing that it is time for the ball to drop.

The fix for this problem is simple:

1. Put your New Year's Eve ball in storage.

2. Take it out and place it on your farm. This box will pop up:



3. Watch the show & collect your free level!

If that didn't work, then:

2) Your computer sucks and the server is timing out.

The solution for this problem is a bit more complex. This stems from the fact that as FarmVille evolves, it is becoming more and more of a resource hog. There is just a bit too much animation right now on many farms: the animated icons, the animated animals, the animated Holiday tree, and especially the sparkling of fertilized crops can really drain your computer's resources.

The result from all this animation is that the New Year's ball drop is too intense for farmer's using outdated technology to handle when added to all these previous events. Since my desktop decided to slap me with an unmountable_boot_volume error, I am relegated to my laptop until my new desktop ships in.

The New Year's ball drop is to my laptop what the straw was to the camel with the broken back. It's not that the ball drop itself is the problem - but just an excessive drain on system resources. With that said, here is what I did to get the ball to drop:

1) First off, make sure your graphics are set to low quality. The eye shaped icon at the top left of your FarmVille screen should be black. If it is white, you are currently running on high quality.

2) Next, clear a nice space on the corner of your farm so that nothing is around, just green grass.

3) Put the New Year's Ball in storage.

4) Now, log out of Facebook and reboot your computer.

5) Log back in and scroll over to that empty part of your farm. Zoom all the way in so your computer does not need to render any intense graphics.

6) Place the ball, and enjoy the show.

7) If this doesn't work, try the same process but use a different browser (chrome instead of firefox, firefox instead of internet explorer, etc).

Now, even if you do everything right, it still may not drop, and this can happen for a combination of two reasons:

1) Your computer is still too slow.

2) FarmVille servers are slammed from everyone trying to get that free level.

Odds are it is a little bit of both. As far as I can tell, since your computer is taking 30 years to load FarmVille / the animation of the ball drop / etc, the server is dropping your request.

I was able to get the ball to drop on my laptop only after following all these steps. If it still doesn't work, seek out a faster computer. You could also try waiting until tomorrow or the 3rd when the servers will be less strained.

You have until January 3rd to collect your level (I believe), as "Free Fuel Week" start January 4th. If it's still not working by the 3rd, I recommend looking around for another computer. Surely you have some real life friends that may have a faster computer than yours; just drop by, say it is an emergency and you need to use their computer, and hop on Facebook, put the NYE ball in and out of storage, then collect your level and you'll be set for when the servers stabilize next week.

FarmVille New Year's Eve Ball Dropping Woes; Strategy Guide