FarmVille: Zynga gives free Holiday gift to all players!

For the past few days, Zynga had been asking FarmVille players to "Like" the official Zynga Inc. fan page on Facebook. We brought you news of this in the past, as Zynga was promising a free Festive / Holiday Cow to all users, should said fan page reach 1 million likes.

Of course, that total has been reached, and passed, and Zynga has confirmed that we will be receiving the Cow. Now, users that log into FarmVille will receive a very interesting pop-up, as Zynga has released a free present in the game. This is a wrapped present, and we are told we won't be able to open it until Christmas proper - December 25. Could this be the Holiday Cow they promised us?

While that would make the most sense, as the free present ensures that all users are able to have their free cow without any extra work outside of the game, we also wouldn't turn down another free gift, just for playing the game.

When the time comes (or if you'd just like to look at your present early), you can find your gift by heading into your Holiday Tree's menu (click on the and click on "Look Inside") and then click on the Presents tab. This is where you will find all of the wrapped (read: locked) gifts on your account, and this is where you'll be able to go to unwrap them when we get the green light.

We'll be sure to let you know what's inside the wrapped Zynga present, if it turns out to not be the free cow (it may be unlikely, but stranger things have happened).

FarmVille: Second wave of Holiday Tree prizes now available

As we told you last week, the FarmVille Holiday Tree is now available, and friends and family everywhere have turned their eyes squarely to the endeavor of collecting presents - lots, and lots, and lots of presents. At launch, there were but six prizes available to earn by redeeming some of your stockpile of presents (if you don't include the many contents of the Winter Whimsy box), and today, we see FarmVille increasing the prize variety by six.

Now, if you look inside your Holiday Tree (click on the tree and click "Look Inside" on the small menu that appears), you'll see that instead of just being able to trade your presents in for the first six items, that there is now a "Page 2." This Page 2 has some of the items that you were able to earn via the Winter Whimsy box (like the Ice House or Tinsel Tree), but it also has items that were given away during the Festive Tree quest set (like the Frozen Fantasy statue).

All told, these new items cost more presents, but are more elaborate, or at least more exclusive, so it seems to make up for the increased cost. The six items are:

Sneezy Sheep - 75 Presents
Tinsel Tree - 100 Presents
Frozen Fantasy - 125 Presents
Ice House - 150 Presents
Kodiak Cub - 200 Presents
Arctic Fox - 275 Presents

Don't worry though - if you had yet to gather enough presents to have a chance at the six items released at first, these items are still there for your redemption pleasure. For those that have enough Ice Cubes or Winter Whimsy boxes, however, these prizes will give you plenty more to collect for.

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

Do you like this second set of presents better than the first? For the items that are found in the Winter Whimsy boxes, will you choose to save up to purchase the items outright, or will you continue to purchase the Winter Whimsy boxes and hope to get lucky?