Mafia Wars Italy launches Oct. 23, beta testing starts now for the lucky

A recent blog post on the Mafia Wars Blog revealed that Mafia Wars Italy is currently in beta testing for select accounts and will go live for all players Level 5 and above on Oct. 23. More importantly, Zynga disclosed a few vital details concerning this brand new city.

First, Italy will launch with five Regions: Roma, Palermo, Venezia, Milano and Napoli (hint: they're all Italian names for more familiar locations). These Regions are really just different names for Districts like in Las Vegas, and just like in Sin City, three more Regions will be released later. However, the similarities stop there.

While this second fact is somewhat of a given, Italy will recognize a new currency called Lira, which will function just like Vegas Chips. But there will no Vault in Italy and the banking system will operate just how it does in other cities like New York. And, of course, you'll be able to send and receive Italian Satchels of Lira just like Racks of Vegas Chips.

Lastly, Italy will have three different job paths: Energy, Fighting and Social. This new third path will act just like Social Missions do, requiring players to gather their friends as helpers to complete timed jobs every 8 hours. We honestly don't see players completing all of Italy like this, but it's a welcome supplement to both Stamina and Energy players. It's also obvious that some of these jobs are going to require items bought with Lira, but in surprisingly fortunate news, you won't have to master every path in a Region to move up to the next Mastery tier. (Defeating a Region boss automatically steps you up to the next tier.) And here you thought your weekend was going to be boring.

[Source: Mafia Wars Blog]

Excited yet for Mafia Wars Italy? How will you tackle this city's upgraded job mastery system? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.