Duel

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.

Duels in this form were chiefly practiced in early modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period (19th to early 20th centuries) especially among military officers.

During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly fought with swords (the rapier, later the smallsword), but beginning in the late 18th century in England, duels were more commonly fought using pistols; fencing and pistol duels continued to co-exist throughout the 19th century.

The duel was based on a code of honour. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honour by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it, and as such the tradition of duelling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era it extended to those of the upper classes generally. On rare occasions, duels with pistols or swords were fought between women; these were sometimes known as petticoat duels.

Duels (band)

Duels are an English indie band from Leeds formed in 2005. They have been described by The Guardian as "one of Britain's most ambitious groups"

The band's debut album, The Bright Lights And What I Should Have Learned was released in July 2006 and received an 8/10 review in the NME, while also being named 'Album of the Week' in The Sunday Times, The Guardian and on XFM.

Band members

Career

Duels formed from the ashes of band SammyUSA. Their early demos received welcome attention from UK radio DJs such as Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq. Their first limited edition single "Potential Futures" was released on the Transgressive Records label on 18 July 2005. The song featured on the Fifa 2006 soundtrack.

In May 2005, they signed to Nude Records. Their second single, "Pressure On You", was released on 7 November 2005. Third single, "Animal" was released on Monday 10 April 2006. Duels' debut album, "The Bright Lights And What I Should Have Learned" was released in July 2006. It received a positive review in the New Musical Express (NME), garnering an 8/10 review score, Clash magazine, Time Out and was named Album of the Week in The Sunday Times, The Guardian and on XFM. The band released two further EP's in 2006, "The Slow Build EP" and the "Once In The Night EP".

Duels (video game)

Duels is a free player vs. player browser game. A player's avatar can either fight another player controlled avatar, or an NPC to gain experience points, gold, and tokens. Tokens can be used to purchase packs containing scrolls, armor, and weapons. Gold can be used to purchase armor, weapons, pets, and, in Duels 2.0, actions. Players are given the option to issue challenges to each other. When a player accepts a challenge, the avatars fight it out in real time, but without player interaction. As such, players do not need to be logged in to engage in battle. Duels does offer paid memberships called Nobles or Patrons with many useful perk choices, and non-member players can also purchase Challenge Coins which give access to some of these more advanced menu choices for playing, but you do not have to pay to play.

History

Due to articles featured on TechCrunch and Digg, the game experienced more network traffic than its servers could handle at its launch in August 2007. In December 2007 Duels launched a new version of the game, called Duels 2.0. This version introduced female avatars and a new level of strategy with the addition of actions. In summer 2008, additional quests were added to help with non-paying players running short of game gold to buy actions. The multi duel feature of the challenge button was disabled due to an interference with in-game awarding of badges earned but not credited to player accounts. Other added features include multiple ladders for different level brackets, up to ten playable avatars per single player account, and multi item trading. The August expansion "Treasure of Abtu-Khan" was introduced with Noble and Patron challenge coin users having the option to shop in three other in-game stores besides the basic Armory that all duels.com players can use. Challenge Coin users can also choose to respec their avatars into two cat folk races besides the current human and elf options.