It's my second site report, and this week it comes with even more updates! Just in case you missed anything out there since last week's site report, here's a good overview of what's been going on in our network.

Elitist Jerks

Community member Fulla put together a full Death Knight deck in Hearthstone that focuses on being fun to play as much as winning, and also included a video to go with the deck. The forum post includes a full deck breakdown.

Glass Joe has been working on an Esper heal build for 10v10 in WildStar and gives us a nice breakdown in this post.

Returning to Hearthstone discussions, Glass Joe is also busy over there. GJ is streaming Hearthstone arena battles, giving tips to new folks. If you've missed out on streams, GJ edits them and posts them on YouTube!

EQHammer

In this edition of Fact or Fiction, Veluux dives into the sandbox versus themepark discussion by giving us a then and now perspective of question as core gameplay. Is this type of directed content here to stay and is it the best route to take for MMOs? Will we see a return to questing and directed content as a bonus to core gameplay?

In part two of this series, the EQHammer staff continues their analysis of how EverQuest defined the MMO genre and how it continues to influence MMOGs.

Sunday's War Report discusses PVP and PVE for Landmark, and how we'll see PVP in-game first, which isn't a bad thing. With Storybricks and emergent AI, working out the combat kinks through player versus player before complicating the world with mobs will make a more enjoyable PVE experience once we get to it. Also, don't dismiss the fact that PVP will add another layer of immersion and player generated content.

How do you prefer your MMO content – easy and accessible for all players or scaled content where everyone can do most things, but only some can do everything? Those of us who were in high end raiding guilds in EverQuest enjoyed the challenge of getting access to this content and knew it was a time-consuming process to get there. As MMOs have shifted to create content for anyone who wants to get there can have access to, is this the best choice? Can SOE pull off such content for EQNext and should they?

In another feature on quests in MMOs, this time we hear from more of the EQHammer team and how they feel about questing in MMOs and whether or not it should continue to fit in as the core part of gameplay, or if questing should return to being just part of the core gameplay.

If you remember last week's Site Report, the EQHammer team highlighted Angel Bay as part of their Landmark's Extreme Homes “Player Cities” feature. This spotlight is exclusively about Angel Bay, which is arguably one of the most impressive community collaborations in Landmark.

Speaking of Landmark's Extreme Homes, this week's edition focuses on underwater builds, which can now be fully functional and accessible with recent improvements to water.

This week on The Wire, we see Dave Georgeson tease us with new building tools, as well as completely redo the roadmap timeline, this time updating it with SOE Live added in. In the corresponding timeline forum post, he mentions that it had to be reworked and there will be big reveals at SOE Live. What do you want to see announced at SOE Live? Oh, and SOE survived a kittenpocalypse, so be sure to read the EQHammer article for an extra dose of cute.

Miss this week's Landmark Live stream? Here are the highlights from it, which include kitten updates, a Player Studio related Q&A, Thursday's patch, and details on the Dark Elf Foundation competition.

This week's Ask the Druid debates whether or not to buy Landmark in closed beta, when the game will be available for free in the future. Our wise druid, shayalyn, breaks down the good and the bad for us.

In part three of The Game That Shaped the Genre, the team discusses the future of MMOs with an EverQuest bias. Looking at EverQuest Next and how SOE has scrapped multiple iterations of the game to get to where it is now might be a risky move, but as shayalyn says, “it is really time to just shatter that mold and start fresh.”

Fil Nonkovic, in a follow up interview (first can be found here) with Miguel Cepero, the man who created the Voxel Farm, which is the core engine for Landmark. They discuss the future of voxels, voxel animals in the pipeline, and how the community constantly impresses and surprises him.

eSportsMax

Due to the recap from this weekend's MLG Anaheim, this week's site report will be a little on the light side for eSportsMax, to minimize repeat content. However, if eSports are your jam, you should definitely read about the Protoss upset and everything else that happened over the weekend here. Even without those articles here, it was still a crazy busy week for our friends over at eSportsMax.

In non-MLG news, this NA LCS week 5 recap covers Team Dignitas vs compLexity, Team SoloMid vs Evil Geniuses, Counter Logic Gaming vs Curse, Cloud 9 HyperX vs LMQ, and an update on current season standings.

In this final day recap of EU LCS, we have ROCCAT vs Gambit Gaming, SK Gaming vs Supa Hot Crew, Fnatic vs Millenium, Alliance vs Copenhagen Wolves, and the final season standings.

Not everything's been sunshine and roses for this recent LCS in London, namely being that Russian players were unable to attend due to insufficient time to get their visas in order before the tournament. While Riot's certainly caught a lot of flack over it, this also shows the value of road shows.

Video wrap up for LCS week 5:

Week 6 for LCS EU has started with Fnatic pulling ahead against Copenhagen Wolves, Millenium losing to Alliance, Supa Hot Crew overcoming Gambit Gaming, and ROCCAT ending their winning streak to SK Gaming.

eSportsMax and Capcom have teamed up for Capcom Pro Tour recaps! This means that while coverage remains the same on eSportsMax, some of their coverage will also be on the Capcom Pro Tour website. Super rad news, congrats, folks!

In some non-League news, we turn to StarCraft II for the GSL Code S finals, which has a special brother-against-brother battle.

GGMaster

Although this guide for Hearthstone technically came out last Friday, it posted after our last Site Report publish and we don't want to let it go ignored. Hearthstone, Blizzard's trading card action game, has a few nuances to navigate through, part of which makes the game so popular. GGMaster makes sure you know how to draft your minions when you head into the arena.

Another Hearthstone guide, this one breaks down what the arena is, what to expect, and it goes over how to defeat your opponents.

Part of mastering League of Legends means knowing how to hold Jungle and when to gank. Since a major part of jungling and doing it well is dependent on you who you are playing. Learning how to jungle well will make you a wanted member on teams.

Did you know that there are nine different game modes in Dota 2? Just when you thought all you had to do was master a few different heroes and efficiently farming creeps, you're hit with the reality of figuring out how each mode works. GGMaster's got ya covered.

Aram, or All Random All Mid, is a game mode that features only one mid lane that you play in. While some see Arams as a more casual experience, you still gain influence here, so in reality it is another feature to master in League of Legends.

Since half of Hearthstone is building a good deck, knowing the different deck archetypes – or just deck type – will help you understand how to build a successful deck to overcome your opponents when it's time to hit the arena. This guide breaks down the different archetypes, how to use them, and their advantages and disadvantages.

Guild Wars 2 Hub

We already highlighted some of the articles posted earlier this week when ArenaNet released their teaser video. Here's what's happened since then and everything else that's not Season 2 releated!

Guide for Thieves with a build that focuses on pistol/pistol and short bows for damage and control support via venoms in WvW.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Landmark Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 18, 2016

About The Author

Vendolyn's been playing MMOs since 1999, although Vendolyn in-game often becomes a long-term shelved alt. When she's not gaming, she's likely marathoning some questionable TV show or babbling about music to no end. She really likes goats.

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