FarmVille was a game that had existed and remained popular for over 5 years, and the reason it had always remained popular and successful was because of how addictive it was and how great the game was, with constant new updates.

You started out with a small patch of land where you were able to grow vegetation of your choice and came back later to harvest it when it was done. You could sell the harvested vegetation to earn gold or you could keep it to make something of even greater value later on, such as how you could keep wheat to mill it into flour. As you harvested and sold more, you were given access to more land and more options, and the possibilities of what you could do with your farm were absolutely limitless.

The real-time nature of the game let you keep it properly maintained and keep your vegetation properly watered. This consistent need to keep checking on your farm was why the game was so addictive, as a player was always wondering what was going on their farm when they weren't playing. This addictiveness was one of the main reasons that had allowed the game to survive over the years.

While yes, the game ran in real-time, the developer had also given you the option to speed things up by spending real money. While the concept of micro-transactions in a free-to-play game might have put a lot of people off, it was nothing to worry about as you could progress just fine even without purchasing items or boosts with real money.

On top of all this, FarmVille also allowed you to help out other people who were playing the game by allowing you to water their plants and similar things. This feature of being able to help others out created a sense of community between the players and was a great feature that many had come to enjoy.

All things considered, FarmVille was a very entertaining farming simulator that had remained popular over 11 years. However, like all good things, Farmville had to come to an end. On December 31st, 2020, once Adobe decided to sunset its Flash technology, many beloved Flash games, including Farmville became no more.

That being said, the game lives on in its many sequels on the mobile platform. It's not the original Farmville that we have all grown to love, but it's close enough to maybe bring back some memories of the good ol' times!