Respect is a brand new game item in Mafia Wars that is meant to provide players with new items from time to time. The basic idea is that you gain respect every time you receive a gift from another player, so it can add up very quickly over a short period of time. The gift that you receive must be a positive gift in order for it to count in a positive manner towards your respect. For example, if you receive a useful gift from another player, your respect meter will increase by 10 percent. If you receive a disrespectful gift, such as a water gun, your respect meter will decrease by 5 percent. Many Mafia Wars game guides will have more information on which gifts are respectful and which are disrespectful, but it is pretty easy to figure out if you have played the game before.

Since this is a game that is played on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, you will have to ask your friends to send you gifts in order for this feature to work. This can be difficult as most of your friends probably will not like being spammed and asked for gifts. Therefore, you must be very subtle about receiving these gifts and do not ask for them too often. If you get annoying with your requests, you run a much higher chance of receiving a disrespectful gift, which will make it much more difficult for you to reach 100 percent on your respect meter.

Once Mafia Wars Respect Meter reaches 100 percent, you will receive another gift. For the first level, it is merely a switchblade that will not do you a whole lot of good. As you move through the respect levels, the gifts that you will receive become much better. So, it is definitely worth a try. Remember that free gifts count in this category, so be sure to send gifts to others in order to get them to send them back to you. After all, Mafia Wars is all about helping each other out in order to reach an end goal. If you are having trouble getting friends to cooperate, it might be time to get some new friends to join who will take the time to send you free gifts on a consistent basis.

Since respect is a relatively new aspect of Mafia Wars, most Mafia Wars game guides are unsure of how good the gifts get as you move through the respect levels. There is a little bit known at this time, however, and although the initial gifts that you will receive appear to be somewhat limited, we have to believe this will improve once more levels are added to the respect feature. What we do know is that at level 2 you will receive a Grach, level 3 you will receive a Puggio, level 4 you will receive a zip gun, level 5 you will receive a Samurai helmet, level 6 you will receive a machine gun, and at level 7 you will receive a Ghillie suit. While it does appear as though this new feature has been capped at level 7, we will have to see what happens in the future to get a full read on how much good this new feature will do for Mafia Wars.

If you give respect, you will be rewarded with a gift. It is a choice between a boosts in experience points, energy, or stamina. Beside an increase of respect level, the recipient also gets Ru357 Pistola, Hedge Clippers, Frankenstein Poker Chips, Pros 2 Iron, Pea Shooter, Kunai, Machine Gun Kelly, Broken Bottle, Stuffed Turkey, Tiger Skin Armored Vest, Bandanna, or Gene Splicer.

Since Mafia Wars is constantly evolving, it is easy to imagine that the respect meter will soon evolve into something else or will add new levels. This means that now is a good time to begin adding onto your levels, since you will want to be maxed out once the new levels are introduced. Even though most Mafia Wars game guides are still unsure about the impact that this feature will have, it is pretty safe to say that they will expand it once the majority of the players are more certain about how it works.

Get out there and begin sending gifts to other Mafia Wars players and you will find that they will start sending you gifts on a regular basis. Once you begin to see all of the new inventory items that you can add through this new feature, you will want to make sure that you take advantage of it as much as possible in the future.