Zynga’s FarmVille English Countryside expansion rolls out

Zynga has now launched the recently announced ‘English Countryside’ expansion to its hit social game FarmVille.

The biggest update to FarmVille since it launched almost two years ago, the game offers a ‘fresh start’ to players who don’t want to abandon the farm that they’ve spent plenty of time (and money) cultivating. Players will be invited aboard an airship and transported to England for an experience that is unashamedly ‘more of the same’, albeit with a few tweaks.

Taking an approach that has proved successful in Zynga’s CityVille and FrontierVille titles, the game now has a narrative structure. Players are guided through the usually freeform FarmVille experience by a number of characters, and a map shows where along the timeline they are compared to their friends. Crops can now be mastered at a faster pace, while English Countryside players can also breed a variety of multi-coloured sheep, in a feature based on the success of the addition of horse breeding to the original game last year.

FarmVille has amassed 14 million players since its original launch and Zynga says that its players collectively tend around 37 million acres of land. While its addictive nature may offend at least one of The Next Web team, the roll out of a whole new farm should keep its devoted following coming back for more.

Existing players will notice that the new game has been added to their account when an airship crashes onto their farm. The game is rolling out to users at FarmVille.com and on Facebook right now once they hit level 20, although mobile users won’t get the option to play for the time being.