An online archive called Library of Leng has indexed more than 208,000 articles about Magic: The Gathering, some dating to the card game's first years in the 1990s. [via 404 Media]
The site is the work of Gregor Stocks, a software engineer who built the searchable database of old Magic writing and linked each entry to its original source. When a source is offline, Stocks points to a working copy on the Internet Archive. With an author's permission, the site rehosts pieces that publishers no longer carry. The collection spans rules updates and card announcements from Wizards of the Coast to long strategy essays, and it preserves work from defunct fan sites such as The Dojo, an early hub whose old links now dead-end at the actual jiu-jitsu dojo in Laguna Beach, California, that later revived the defunct domain.
Stocks described the effort to Matthew Gault, telling him the response has been positive and that no one has asked to be removed. More material is still being added; Gault was unable to find his own MTG writings, written and published long ago. Finding and scanning work in old magazines, Stocks told him, presents a greater challenge than archiving online publications.
Magic: The Gathering was first released in 1993, revolutionizing IRL fantasy gaming with spells and summonings using card decks assembled from hundreds (now more than 20,000!) of available cards. Its players have written about strategy online since the Usenet era, first on newsgroups and sites like The Dojo and later across a shifting set of commercial and fan publications.
Much of that writing has vanished. Sites close, companies delete their archives, and domains change hands, taking decades of work offline with little notice. Library of Leng (itself named for a Magic card, heavily played and worth $2.64 in good condition) collects what remains, and stands as a record of how readily the internet loses track of its own past.
Previously:
• JD Vance tries to blame 'Magic: The Gathering' as the reason girls thought he was a creepy teen
• Epic Prophecy unleashed: the Mountain Goats lead singer designs exclusive Magic: The Gathering Cards
• Magic: The Gathering is Turing complete
