Indeed, my friend. With Frogboy expressing interest in a "Wizard Duel" mode I thought it would be a good idea to bring this up now. If something like this was done and handled right it could even branch off into it's own game/IP. You know how popular card games are these days with the kiddies. Well, this is like a virtual card game but the cards are actual spells for Wizards in the game world. If it caught on they could charge money for "Expansion Decks" and things like that. There's a Ton of "Magic: The Gathering" clones out there...and they ALL suck. I think Stardock has the ability to make a game like that only geared more for us adults like "M:TG" is and have it Not Suck and Elemental gives them the Perfect Platform to do it with.

By doing it on a large scale multi-player map it's almost like a "Mini MMO" which Stardock would run on their servers to make sure people weren't hacking in cards to cheat at tournaments. I know if Stardock did a mode like this that let me customize my Wizard I'd be VERY Interested in challenging people to tournaments and earning a "Rank" or something at it. That would be really awesome. It would also be the first time I'd be interested in playing a system like this since I played "M:TG" as a teenager and in my early 20's.

Adding quests to the main world gives the players something else to do aside from just fight each other and maybe they'd even have to form alliances to go into some of these dungeons and survive. It also gives them the means to give out more spell/cards and other items that Wizards could use in duels or trade to other Wizards.

If I didn't have so much other stuff to do with modding I'd rather see done first, I'd try to do something like this myself when they give us the ability to run our own mod servers.

This game needs a Play By E Mail mode and needs it BAD. I am stating that because the PBEM system is what made Age of Wonders Shadow Magic so successful (I used to be a very active member of the AOWSM forum, where the the developers used to come and interact with the members). The only thing that makes AOWSM a little more right for PBEM is that characters in AOWSM have a little more movement so that one is almost sure that every turn something happens. Also that makes AOWSM games last about 100-150 turns at the most which means that people who play one turn each day would be done a a few months. Once I had a game last over a year, but that was just once. With EWOM every large game would last 3 years and many turns would see the players just doing nothing. So that's my input:  Try to make a PBEM mode, test it and if most turns get boring, just see what happens if units go let's say twice as fast. 

Sound a bit like HOMM online.

http://homm.91.com/index/