Duels offered paid memberships called Nobles or Patrons with many useful perk choices, and non-member players could purchase Challenge Coins which gave access to some of these more advanced menu choices for playing, but the game was not pay to play.
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.
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 included 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 could use.
Challenge Coin users could also choose to re-spec their avatars into two cat folk races besides the original human and elf options.
This also allowed players to transform their avatar into the undead or a feline as well as join alliance between the Elementals or Singlemind.