Ivorak

Sometimes, but ability to schedule that would be nicer. This one is probably less important than the other two for me.

Another one that's been bothering me for awhile:

I often see announcements first through the Discord channel, but when I click on them to expand them I'm usually on mobile and the logged out layout for new announcements cuts off a good portion of the message making them really hard to read. A responsive layout would be a big plus there in particular!

can't implement all now, but they are good ideas and i will do some of them.

i think we should dedicate a QoL week, where all i do is just this kind of stuff and not big features.. maybe the week after this one, you will soon see why :D

Good thread! (Reminds me of https://blog.sbensu.com/posts/friction-logs/, one of which I've been meaning to write up for MD for a while now)

A few quality of life requests of my own around the in-game inbox:
Threaded messages - would help me keep track of a conversation history better, and especially relevant to reducing clutter now that the auction house sends messages for every time I get outbid on an item.
Starred messages - let me star or bookmark the most important messages I get
Snoozed messages - let me snooze a message to a point in the future when it'll appear as a new unread message again. This would help me manage responses based on time I actually have available or more generally when the "stars align" and I can actually take action on a request.

Good thread! (Reminds me of https://blog.sbensu.com/posts/friction-logs/, one of which I've been meaning to write up for MD for a while now)

A few quality of life requests of my own around the in-game inbox:
Threaded messages - would help me keep track of a conversation history better, and especially relevant to reducing clutter now that the auction house sends messages for every time I get outbid on an item.
Starred messages - let me star or bookmark the most important messages I get
Snoozed messages - let me snooze a message to a point in the future when it'll appear as a new unread message again. This would help me manage responses based on time I actually have available or more generally when the "stars align" and I can actually take action on a request.

Stepping back into combat, there are a few things I’ve noticed that I just wish were a little easier. I also think most of these could fit quite naturally into the world itself:
Rituals: Allow us to create and prepare rituals even when the target/player isn’t currently present. A ritual is something we prepare through our own will and knowledge; the person we intend to affect doesn't necessarily need to be standing in front of us while we prepare it. Premeditated murder, essentially.
Ritual presets: Let us save commonly used rituals. Think of these as personal ritual patterns (inner magic designs??) or knowledge we've already mastered, rather than having to reconstruct the same ritual from scratch every time.
Creature search: Add a search bar when selecting creatures for rituals.
Creature favourites: Please let us favourite creatures so they always appear at the top. These would essentially be the creatures we have formed the strongest familiarity with or rely upon most often.
Creature organization: Tags, filters, favourites, and sorting by things like level, rarity, age, stats, etc. Ideally this would be at the top of the creature page. A seasoned warrior, ritualist, or creature handler should be able to organize their knowledge and resources in a way that makes sense to them.
Creature grouping: Optionally group duplicates together, such as all Grasan types or all Aramors.
Recently used: Have recently used creatures/items appear near the top.

None of these would really change the mechanics or make combat easier, just more organized for new comers and fossils.
If anyone has other QoL ideas that could also make sense, I'd love to hear them.
edit: I realized a lot of the issues I have with creating rituals is if we put the drop down menu at the bottom of the creature page inside the creature ritual maker itself, it would work.

Due to a player asking to be removed from the AL I'm going to need to rewrite a number of days, alongside recreating images. Unfortunately I write these a few days ahead so it needs some rework. I hope I will be back on track by next week.
I have contacted everyone involved in this, so If you are involved in this, or want to be involved, and haven't gotten a PM, let me know.

As titled.

Either pay up or disqualify me

I made that out of a soda tin can. I think it's quite good considering what i used and little skills

I think they might be new. The herb basket I got from the evo store has this feature (and I just confirmed by harvesting from a location with less 0.5 resources and it remained at 0.5 resources).

A few more. Would love some suggestions for next ones people would like to see

oh come on..... whats this joke? not worth the effort looking at it, maybe we should stop rewarding any good intention..

Over the past little while I've been experimenting with creating 3D models inspired by MagicDuel's creatures, characters, and artwork. The results have been encouraging, and I'd like to take the idea much further.
My goal is to eventually recreate every creature, character, item, and landmark in MagicDuel as faithful 3D models.
This isn't about redesigning the game or replacing the original artwork. It's about preserving and celebrating it in another medium. Every model will aim to stay as true as possible to the original designs while filling in only the details necessary to create a complete three-dimensional version.
Some possible uses include:
High-resolution renders of creatures and characters.
3D-printable miniatures for collectors.
Animated turntables and showcases.
Virtual galleries of the realm.
Community artwork and promotional material.
A complete 3D archive of MagicDuel's visual history.

These are nearing completion:


I'd like this to be a community-driven project rather than a personal one.
I'm asking for the community's help in deciding what should be modeled next. If there's a creature, character, item, or landmark you've always wanted to see in 3D, post your suggestion below. The most requested or most interesting ideas will be given priority.
If you have old concept art, screenshots, lore references, or other resources that could help improve the accuracy of a model, I'd love to see those as well. The more references available, the more faithful the final result can be.
Current priorities include:
Remaining creatures.
Player avatars and iconic characters.
Important artifacts and items.
Landmarks from every land.
Structures, monuments, and environmental assets.
My philosophy is simple: accuracy first. If a detail isn't visible in the original art, I'd rather work with the community to interpret it than invent something that doesn't fit the world.
My hope is that, over time, we can create a complete 3D collection of the MagicDuel realm, one model at a time.
So, what should I model next? Let me know below.

I've been testing out the pool table minigame and there are some (minor in the scheme of things) issues that affect playability.

- You can't drag beyond the table boundaries for shot strength (this one might be intentional to make things harder?)
- Unclear what the reward criteria are (is it one silver coin each after 5/10/50 wins count?)
- Angle/strength indicator keeps glitching out
- If you accidentally click outside the modal it dismisses the game (there are many modals in MD where this should be the expected behavior and isn't. And here it's the opposite)
- I think it lets you resume a game, but it either told me I was the wrong set (stripes vs. solids) or it added back different balls, or something else that made it confusing so I was aiming at the wrong thing.

I'd love to see balanced wins in the Evo shop if its not in there. >.>

The forge is not just an AI making items up, its also a judge of character, a profiler.

Let me share with you some of the recent reasoning it had for some of the recently created items, so you understand what it does (and why you didnt get what you wanted, or why you did). This is a mix from various players, i will not name who is who
I will not specify if the forge note is for good or for bad, i let you figure that out yourself.. but its enough to know the forge does an adversarial review of its own actions and has an internal committee that votes on each decision after objectively analyzing all available aspects.
There are dozens of such investigations done for a single item, with huge amounts of data processed and interpretted before deciding even the smallest variation. It is the closest thing to an AI judge i ever built so far.

- They are sacrificing the very Elemental Amulet itself (id 3358, 17y old, copies=1, the unique original) — the literal object of their wish, placed on the altar. (inconsistent wish self canceled)
- 1858 active days, gold veteran, last meaningful active phase March-May 2022 (94 events) coincides exactly with when the wishlist paper was written; since then only sporadic resource-crafting. Player is in twilight phase, cashing in legacy.
- Player retains his absolute top creatures (Madhorn 695 wins is KEPT in collection at top_trained, but a duplicate-tier Madhorn is sacrificed; Elementals V level-6 with 5M+ exp kept). They are giving up the secondary army, not the crown jewels — consistent with a focused empowerment ritual rather than total liquidation.
- Past wish #20 was 'Mutate GG Drachorn into Wind Dragon' — they have a precedent for using sacrificial/transmutation magic to convert one creature form into a more useful one, fitting an item-forge transmutation here. Coherence in course.
- Central_concentration 0.75 at 1_0x0_1 with only 4 events / 2 distinct locations in a year — they are rooted and low-mobility; a portable renewable resource item fits a stationary merchant far better than a combat artifact.
- 9 locked-favourite Elucubratie at level 1 with ~2500 wins each — he keeps small bound creatures as treasured familiars; collector of contained spirits.
- Lifetime 1980W/1980L — fights to KEEP BALANCE, only 4 fights in last 90 days. He is not pursuing a warlord wish; the 'army' he wants is symbolic/quiet, fitting Caretaker doctrine.
- Heavy recent crafting of Otherarmy stones, Invisibility stones, Lockinchaos stones, Skulls, Bones — building a death/army-summon toolkit around the same period.
- Active phases are now reduced to brief annual spikes (Feb 2024/25/26 and June 2026). The current June 2026 spike (19 events) coinciding with this forge suggests an attempt to make this one event matter — a renewal/recrowning moment.
- 2649 items owned, 720 'valuable', 145 favourites, plus 658 shop items — a deep collector/curator, not a depleter. Giving up 8 anniversary plushies + a creature is meaningful but not impoverishing; he expects a personal artifact, not a god-tier weapon.
Enough about the reasoning samples, now about the desire profiling:
Inferred wish: To be re-crowned as the true elder Scribe of the Caretakers — to convert his long, quiet veteran tenure and his oldest companions' loyalty into a real mark of authority and presence, not the play-pretend kingship of a grass crown. (strong)
Significance: 0.788 (active 6235d, papers 8, pop -7)
Verdict: A chat_poll seal that obeys every die: usable (presents a witnessing vote), no spell, no enchanted aura, tag valuable, tier flavor — comfortably below the epic ceiling, and appropriately so given the modest sacrifice (one common play-crown plus two non-rare lvl-5 plants) and middling significance (0.788). The seal honors all three sources literally: the grass IS the play-crown's substance, Bob's and Steve's stems form the binding stays, and their names are engraved on the rim. Crucially the item grants the bearer NO authority — it only invites others to witness or decline, conferring no title, no NPC reaction, no mechanical power over anyone. The "scribe's hand" framing is descriptive, not a claim of office. Description trimmed of the meta line confirming mundanity (kept the concrete "grass has not browned" detail as the actual in-world fact). Clean approval.



Btw..the forge mechanism is faaar more complex and better than the loan review software i built at work recently, and that one uses similar mechanism to decide on your loan eligibility, not some item in a game ;)... but md i love a lot more than work so its only natural it comes out better :D

People with over 100 consecutive days, or over 1000 active days, or anyone holding an item MD Archive Papers, will be able to enter md-archives.com and write what they wish, moderate stuff, or do basically what they want as long as its not vandalism, spam, etc.

This way, this site becomes an earned access. Lets see what will happen.

I made several md archive papers, to me and chew, we can give them on request for cases where that person should clearly have access but does not have the days, if any such case will exist.

Implementation is in progress right now, i will announce it shortly.

Every now and then, when i look back and see what happend in MD development in the last long period, i decide to declare it the end of one stage and the beginning of an other.
A summary of what happend in Stage 16:
- A25 stopped being just an admin panel and turned into a much more complete questmaking and realm-shaping interface. Realm search, activation simulators, TESTMODE, decorations, focused scene editing, clickables libraries, depositables groundwork and a massively expanded npctalk system made it possible to build much more complex and interactive content. - The npctalk/dialogue branch alone exploded: labels, public vars, profile vars, imports/exports, random starts, rephrasing, mobile editing, item selection, text command activation, data formulas and other tools that give questmakers a way to build large branched stories without waiting for artworks. - Upgradeables, building upkeep, treasuries, land resources, regeneration controls, heavy resources, depositables and coin minting pushed the resource layer closer to something that can support real player projects and lasting communal structures. - Combat and ritual mechanics moved too: shard abilities became editable, collectable and species based; more creatures became able to fight; rituals became easier to create on mobile and later in huge batches; teleport blocking and no-teleport rules were added; and killing/revival item reuse got rebalanced in ways that permanently affect land security and ritual planning. - Items advanced a lot toward actual functionality. Items can grant spells, present public choices in chat, carry placed actions and texts, follow complexity levels for future mixing logic, feed the bestiary/NFT branch, and now even start to host minigames. This is one of the most important unfinished branches in MD right now. - Chat and interface updates where massive. MD became much more usable on mobile, the map/inbox/ritual creator and many other pages were reworked, chat commands multiplied, travel via chat and arrow keys appeared, PM history improved, and several sections of MD can now read themselves out loud. - AI entered MD in many forms. Darvin was retired and Eggdar entered play, announcements and help answers became queryable from chat, AI drawing tools started generating scenes, avatars, items and stories for A25, and interactive advisors such as the MD advisor, the Mur clone and the interactive Questmaster's Backpack started to augment how both players and questmakers interact with the realm. - The clearest form of this new AI direction is Eggdar, a true in-world questmaker and storyteller. Eggy evolved from experiment to character: able to remember, guide, describe, talk, build unique plots, run item-aware and team-friendly quests, let you pick rewards, issue future-value quest items and generally show what AI-native gameplay inside MD could look like. Eggy is using the full power of my outer-realm business Lumnar Creations, that powers it. - To support all this, huge infrastructure work happened behind the curtain. Server migrations, firewall work, http2, forum upgrades and relocations, php8 modernization, core refactors, and finally the new MagicDuel API, all changed how MD can be extended from now on. - This new API and the AI work around it deserve special mention. MD now has the kind of infrastructure that allows natural language control over a growing set of realm actions and tools, and even further AI support for future development. This does NOT mean that the AI should define MD. The concepts, ideas, balance and meaning of this realm remain human things, governed by player creativity and ingenuity. The AI is here to extend the playground, not replace the players. - Tags, streaks, spelldocs and research clues started to converge into a more coherent role ecosystem. New tag dispatchers, streak logic, spelldoc migration, clue improvements and unlocking methods are all groundwork for roles that actually unlock tools, places and branches of play. - Consecutive days changed from a prestige number into a real gameplay axis. It now shapes rewards, access, prison escape, deeper lands, boosters and other parts of the realm. - Politically and in the world itself, Stage 16 mattered too. Alliance leadership became more stable, Aia was crowned Queen of Loreroot, Sunfire took over Guardians of the Root, the Player Community Council was formed, important creators were honored in the Creative Creatives hall, Aksel entered SotIS, and an entire new land with nearly 30 scenes opened on MD's 20th birthday. - Minigames! I am not sure how much this will evolve in the future, but its a nice way to give items functionality and resuscitate the silver economy. Minigames can be used to gain silver coins but also consume them. - AI created scenes..while not something i am proud of, and i would still prefer human artworks when possible, AI created content is still an useful way to continue to expand the realm and make it so vast that none of its inhabitants can say they traveled it all - Last but not least, internal tools to develop MD changed dramatically, and are one step ahead of their times. Just few months ago was i able to put to good use plans designed for AI use, so that machine can understand they way i designed stuff in all these 20+ years, and lots of inner workings. I am still waiting for some more, and while looking ancient and living in a game world that is nearly extinct in this niche (compared to other game evolution), MD will remain a mix of vintage and cutting edge tech, as long as i will live. Overall this stage was a very explosive one. Rather than polishing just one branch till perfection, Stage 16 opened many branches at once: AI, tags, item functionality, dialogue systems, resource/building systems, interface modernization, and much more. Some of these branches already bear fruit, others are only now reaching the point where they can start to matter to everyday gameplay.
The upcomming stage should focus less on exploding the toolbox even further, and more on putting these tools in the hands of everyday players, so that an unprecedented level of !!CHAOS!! can happen in the realm. More freedom should return to the players, more true world-changing power should become reachable through role and effort, and several long due evolutionary branches should finally be completed properly: functional items, the role tags ecosystem, depositables, heavy resources, clue and spelldoc chains, deeper land mechanics, and a lot more.
This stage was about exploding the feature set with novel ways to express creativity, and lots of new and feature rich tools. The next one should be more about making these tools reachable, dangerous :D, and useful in the hands of regular players.
I would also like to thank all those that kept supporting MD financially, technically, artistically, through questmaking, debugging, documenting and simply by still being around in such desolated times. Without you, none of the above would mean much, because tools without people to use them are just abandoned machinery.
All these being said, i welcome all of you in Stage 17, a stage that should take all this accumulated potential and turn it into living disorder, player agency and a further EVOLUTION of MagicDuel realm.
signed: Mur, Chewett, Eggdar :D, and the humans crazy enough to put all these tools to good use.
-- enjoy

Picked up some pumpkins to carve with the family tonight; mine is the one on the right. Nothing fancy, but had fun!

Picked up some pumpkins to carve with the family tonight; mine is the one on the right. Nothing fancy, but had fun!

I like this proposal. It solves the problems of 1) the same votes always going to the same players, and 2) having to decide which player to "dislike" when there are no active players in the list who I actually dislike (I usually end up choosing at random amongst the player names I don't know well, which I'd prefer not to be forced to do, especially since sometimes those might be newer players).
I would also like to bring attention to the karmic cantrips proposal I wrote up at https://miscellaneum.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/popular-≠-interesting/ (section at the end, quoted below). Could be a standalone alternative, or the cantrips (and the reasons given) could be included along the player names as context. This could help with creating a more timely reputation system as well (e.g., I could vote based on the ratio of blessings to hexes a player has received in the past month, and whether or not I agree with the reasons given, rather than a long held grudge or rather I think they picked a cool name at the time of account creation, etc.)

 
 

The recent changes to the popularity poll made in Announcement 6231 have, to my perspective, made the popularity poll even more frustrating to engage with. I've personally never liked the idea of giving a "disliked" vote to someone, and feel like I'm arbitrarily downvoting people because I have no option not to.

To combat this, I'd like to propose a change to how the votes are actually carried out - instead of voting one person up and one person down, why don't we use a ranked voting system? Pick three names from the list, and place them in the order of most liked (value of say 3 to the first choice, two to the second, and 1 for the third).
I do recognize being able to say you dislike someone is valuable, so we could perhaps also have an optional option to rank upto three people negatively (-3 through -1), with the option to not fill out all three slots (so you might vote -3 for one person, -1 for another, and leave -2 blank but the system still accepts it as complete).

Thoughts? Something like that would probably take slightly longer to complete, but only by a few seconds and we'd no longer have to say we don't like people that we in reality just don't have an opinion on (while still having the option to express our selves if there are actual issues in the community).
Does anyone have alternative ideas on the popularity voting?

I played the game 10 years ago, and due to some changes in my life, I had to stop playing, forgetting everything in the process including the name of the game itself. I had been thinking for a few months that I wanted to come back but I couldn't remember the name nor find it on MMO pages where I originally found it, It almost felt like If I just imagined the whole thing (which wouldn't be weird considering the nature of the game lol). I finally managed to find it, I don't know how the player base is doing, but honestly I come back with a lot of excitement to grab pen and paper and spend hours on this 
 
Hope you all are doing great!

This can be closed, I found it! It was Blackthorn not gonzalo that was commissioned.
http://storenow.net/my/?f=17e1b8b047b0a06381d9a812988fd2f3

Perhaps we should discuss a settlement.