Gifting

Today’s topic is Gifting. This is a very sensitive subject for me, especially now with the mechanics of gifting changing at almost break-neck speed. But nevertheless, it is not the specifics of gifting that I want to address, it is the spirit of gifting that I will attempt to discuss. There are numerous gifts that can be sent using a variety of Facebook applications; they range from flowers, to cocktail drinks, to birthday cards and on and on. Zoo World has quite a wide variety of gifts that can be sent as well.

Unlimited Gifts–These gifts can be sent to your friends without affecting the inventory or value of your zoo. Currently the unlimited gifts are: 20 lower level animals, 2 collectibles, and the items needed for the current buildables.

Limited Gifts – These gifts consists of the animals (excluding Ultra Rares) that are in your zoo. Please be very careful when you decide to gift these animals. To say that the ability to successfully send and accept gifts is less than stable is a gross understatement. I have been told that is why Zoo World stopped the ability to gift Ultra Rares because once the animal is lost in cyberspace it is just lost, there is no way to retrieve it.

Be even more careful when ASKING for these animals. Most importantly understand that no one is required to give you anything. Just because you WANT an animal or just because you think you NEED an animal it really is of no consequence to your zoo friend. Aesop said “Some men are of more consequence in their own eyes than in the eyes of their neighbors.”

Many people send Unlimited and Feed Animals while working on their trophies. Whereas I am sure your friend admires your ambition in obtaining your Generous Gifter trophy; at what point should your quest, become their burden? Upon receiving an animal into your zoo, whether by gift, breeding, purchase or adoption you may be required to upgrade the cage or purchase one or more additional maintenance managers, and both can be quite costly. Please keep that in mind when you begin gifting animals. I trust your friend is very willing to help you achieve your goal, but may not be financially capable of assisting you at this time.

When sending a gift, you need to do it in the spirit of giving, because it is that, a gift. Unless you have made prior arrangements with your gift recipient that they will send you “B” if you send them “A”, then do not assume that you will receive a gift in return. Realistically, you can actually have made prior arrangements for the gift exchange and the recipient can very well renege on their part of the bargain. So when gifting, if the item is something you cannot do without, or something that you cannot replace, then it really is best not to send it. Some people feel that if you have the latest animal that you should be more than happy to share it with them, nothing can be further from the truth. Of course there are: people who loan animals quite freely, Facebook pages set up to loan and trade animals, and Pay-It-Forward posts along the Feed all the time. If you are uncomfortable with loaning out your animals and find it difficult to tell the requesting friend “No”, then you can gently direct your friend to one of the many sites set up specifically for the loaning of animals.

Sending and receiving Buildable items is a very touchy subject. Regardless of the Buildable, people with a large number of zoo friends are undoubtedly going to finish their Buildable quicker than a person with a small amount of zoo friends. You cannot begrudge a person because they are popular. If it takes 50 buildable items to complete a project, and a person has 1,000 friends, if only 10% of their friends send them one item, they would have enough parts for not 1 but 2 buildables.

So when your “popular” friend post their notification that they need help building their Playground, or they need roses for their Rose Garden or whatever their request may be for the newest Zoo World project; do not post negative comments (e.g. “Don’t help him he never returns gifts”, “I would help but I figure you have enough people to help you”). If you choose not to help, then don’t help. Keep the negativity to yourself. Keep in mind if you do choose to post that kind of unaccommodating statement, your comment is not only read by your “popular” friend but by your “popular” friend’s friends. Not only will your friend be hurt by your post but their friends won’t take very kindly to it either. So 2 days later when you are requesting help or looking for the new Level 500 animal, don’t even think about asking your “popular” friend who you know has the animal. Because by posting that nasty comment 2 days ago, you have totally blown that bridge to smithereens!

I believe that I have finally figured out how the gift requests “pseudo-cycle”. I really don’t like to use “cycle” for the process in which the gift requests are stored, because their appearance really is not cyclic. The gift requests are shown on a “last-come” basis. This means that the last requests to arrive are the ones that are readily viewed. To try to illustrate this process I will embarrassingly use my gift request box as an example.

For weeks my gift request box showed some combination of gifts which normally added up to +/- 100. This “100” included roses, firecrackers, planting pots, welcome baskets, hearts, hugs, you name it. So in an effort to clean out my gift box I decided to sift through all the gift requests. The task was truly overwhelming! Because I did not have 100 gifts, I would estimate that I had closer to 1,000 gifts. Each time I accepted a gift and the gift page refreshed, older gifts appeared.

I have a friend that lives in England. Every time she sends a gift she puts the date and time in the message line. While I was cleaning, I came across a gift that she had sent me that read “Sent 6/15/2010 at 7:30 p.m. England Time”. And unless England time is 3 weeks behind the States, it meant I was even more behind in my gifts than I realized. And if that was not a clear indication, after another hour or so of cleaning, I came across a Fairy Castle guard. Fairy Castle parts!?! How long has THAT promotion been over!?!

When most people are finished with their Buildable they will immediately post “I have finished my Rose Garden, thanks to everyone for your help. Do not send me anymore roses, send your gift request to your friends that need them”, of course change the wording as necessary to fit the particular project.

Now, unless the person clearly states that if you continue to send them buildables they will continue to send them back to you, stop sending them the items. And really stop getting mad because they are not returning your gifts; they don’t need them, they don’t want them, they have said it as tactfully as they possibly could. In most cases the buildables are so painful, that once you complete the project you never want to see any more of the items ever again. Lest I bring up those Evil Easter Eggs…

Nevertheless it all boils down to intent and respect. A gift is a gift. You give a gift as a present to your friend as a sign of kindness and appreciation. You do not give a gift for the sole purpose of getting something in return. Giving something in exchange for something else is a Trade, not a Gift. Before you spout off about the character of one of your friends or the lack thereof, examine your own motives. Did you send them the gift to say "Thanks for being a great friend", or "Thanks for always feeding my babies", or did you send it with the sole purpose of receiving something in return?

If the latter is the case, and you didn’t receive a return Thank You gift, move on, let it go. You can send over 100 gifts every 4 hours using 7 different gifting applications for Zoo World. Is it really worth losing a friend because they didn’t send you back a Spring Horse?

Happy Zooing Everyone!