Ruben

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolks!
Throughout the past few weeks we have noticed increasingly negative comments and remarks with regards to Skylords Reborn, its progress and its development time. Accusations of us scamming supporters are made on a daily basis, and while that is simply false in every aspect, we do understand that a lot of you have major concerns and are worried about the project, whether it's still a thing, whether we have run off with Patreon funds, and where we are right now after 3 years of development. Don't worry, though! We live, and as you will soon find out, we are doing well and are going nowhere!
The thing is, and beta testers know this, that we are actually making a lot of progress to the point where we are busy stress testing the servers with the Closed Beta testing group, improving server stability and creeping closer to Open Beta with every single test. And by the Old Gods, it took a while to get here. A lot of you have an idea of how long a game development cycle can take, and so it is only understandable that 3 years seems like an awful lot just to bring a game back. However, it's a lot more complicated than that due to this being a passion/voluntary project that we don't get paid for, and finding/fixing bugs being way more complex due to us not having made the client code at all. This makes it an unpredictable process in which we can't set deadlines or promise fixed release times. For a more detailed explanation, refer to the quote below from the Open Beta Information thread:
Rest assured, we are happy to inform you that we don't want to make money from this project (even if we wanted to, it would be illegal), and that your support is not in vain. Supporting the project is also completely voluntary, and we do not give any game rewards to patrons at all. Thanks to every single one of you who has been having faith in this project and supporting us by being a thriving and friendly community, we have managed to come a long way in 3 years, in which we faced managerial issues, legal complications, several server rewrites, and a lot of swapping regarding staff and partnerships. Our team right now is very solid and progressive, though, and we're getting closer and closer to that glorious Open Beta. We are reaching important testing milestones, which is fantastic. For example, @Kubik has evaluated our latest Closed Beta Stress Test, which was held yesterday. He has collected the following results:
For more details on the stress test results, there will be an update on our Developer Platform soon!
"What does all this mean?" you may wonder. In essence, it means that we are ironing out some of the last bugs in the current server code (as far as we can see), are getting further in making 12-player maps work properly, and the server is currently able to handle quite some players at the same time. In other words, progress, progress, progress! Keeping this in mind, we would like to give you the following information:
Something BIG is coming.
Though we will not be reaching a full open beta state just yet, something large and important will be coming to the Skylords Reborn community in the near future. To present this and to provide you with details on this big development milestone, we will be announcing a new, important official stream very soon, so stay tuned!
 
Hopefully this update will clarify things and ease away some of the major concerns you may all be having regarding the project. Be sure to check the forums, discord or other social media for the stream announcements, and for weekly updates about all the progress we are actively making, check our Developer Platform!
Thank you all again for your undying support and dedication to the project and the game, and we hope to bring all over 21 THOUSAND of you Skylords, Skyladies and Skythings (*GASP*) more great progress and updates in the near future!

Thanks

Hello Skylords!

Just a quick announcement to let you know that we have a new developer in our team! Welcome @Kubik in the project!
He proved himself during our tests and discussions, and he's clearly a good developer, we are really happy and amazed about that! So, he'll work on the server with the rest of our team!

Congratz! And once again, welcome here skylord!

I just want to add, thank you for all the recent support, this really means a lot to us, and even if we're not answering every message (which is kinda impossible now) that doesn't mean we're not reading them! We're reading every message you guys are sending us, so as we already, sorry for that, but we're all humans, and we're and will continue to do the best we can for this project, don't lose faith, the end is close ♥

Yes, we are very sorry, we need just a bit more of your patience until we can see you in the Forge.

I'm so sorry guys I hope you all understand and aren't too mad!

Dearest Skylords, Skyladies, Skyfolks,
I'm sure most of you have an idea what this announcement is going to be about, given the latest status on Open Beta. As you all have realised, we haven't quite made our promised release goal of week 8. This mainly has to do with PvE breaking way more badly than we expected and fixing taking a lot more time than anticipated. How much time will this take? Well, please allow me a bit more space to explain. 
The Skylords community has grown bigger and better than ever before, for almost 3 years now. We are growing closer to the public beta release of the game, and we're growing more hyped and enthusiastic with every development update Fiki posts. This is a fantastic thing; the BattleForge community has always been my favourite community around, where everyone is relatively friendly and inviting, has fun together and creates a warm, comforting atmosphere. However, as with most hyped projects, enthusiasm can rapidly take over and make both community and developer overexcited. This is generally a great thing, except when it concerns voluntary development as is the case with Skylords Reborn. Don't get me wrong, it's great that you are all so excited about the game; it's really mostly on our side that causes issues. 
The programming team is just as excited about this as you are, and they are working tirelessly to make Open Beta a reality as soon as possible. However, with great hype and little experiences with such projects and group communities, comes great positivity. As you may know from the past, we have always been quite generous with our milestone and deadline estimations, striving every single day to make you all as happy and enthusiastic as possible, pushing our limits to satisfy you, the community, as well as we can. In our combined enthusiasm and desire to bring back a great game to you all, we have been blind to the risks of game development, and made completion date estimates very positively; but game development doesn't work like that. Something will always break, and several things have broken and put us back, changed things up, turned our schedule around. Real life has interfered, servers have been crashed, and the programming team has generally just been looking at the development cycle way too positively and have given themselves way too little time to work with in case things wouldn't go as planned. This has created a lot of frustration on the team and we have been rushing while we shouldn't rush.
Especially in this week of hype, the entire team has experienced the results of massive hype. Tonnes of repeated questions, lots of enthusiasm, but also lots of doubt, lots of impatience, and foremost, intense amounts of pressure on all of our shoulders. The drive and need to meet our target time got so emphasised, and the expectations were unfathomably high. And sadly I have to say that it is taking its toll on some of our team members, even outside of the programming department; we're being hit very hard, but we remain steadfast, for all of you!. We are doing our utmost best to keep you all informed, engaged, and excited about the project, and the last thing we want to do is to disappoint you; and every single time that we may have to, every single time that things go wrong and Open Beta ETA's have proven to be just a little too generous, we disappoint you. And I am certain that I can speak for the entire team if I say that it sometimes genuinely does feel like we fail you all with these hopes we work up for you and end up being forced to shatter. Please be aware that this was never our intention, and unforeseen consequences have resulted in many delays. This has driven the team to a very important and hard decision.
We are not going to give you any exact Open Beta completion times anymore. We will be more broad in our approach, and development timeframes will be larger.
I regret to announce that this is something that really must happen; but I truly care about you all as a community and it breaks my heart every single time we awaken hopes in you that turn out to be false, disappoint and fail you with declaring that we haven't met our terms... needless to say it hurts all of us, the SR team. We're done making unrealistic promises to you guys, and we are sick, tired, and exhausted of disappointing this amazing community over and over. You don't deserve that, and so we will broaden our estimations widely. 
This means that any development estimated times will be longer, but also more uncertain.
This does by no means imply that we are slowing down development. On the contrary! We are working and progressing harder than ever, as many Closed Beta testers can actively tell you. We understand you may be doubting us at this point, we understand you feel like the project isn't progressing enough, and we truly do understand you all want to play; but just short of a hundred testers can tell you that we are making massive progress every day. This project is happening right now as we speak, and those who doubted we would ever get the game online have been proven wrong, and we strive to keep proving doubters wrong as we progress daily. With this new way of announcing progression, it would mean less stress on the team, hopefully no heavy disappointment to the community, and the more exciting and enjoyable the moment is if we finish way ahead of schedule (which is now also way more likely). Hopefully this will give you all a better impression and allow for more realistic expectations.
Game development can take a lot of time, and especially for SR, it is extremely unpredictable. Things can suddenly go wrong, or we can suddenly make huge surges of progress. The most important thing remains that we don't want to rush things. When we release Open Beta we want stable servers, and the best experience for every single one of you. Coding under pressure will only create more bugs, flaws, crashes, and mental problems for our programmers, so we are giving them the time they need. We hope that you can understand this.
That being said, with some of the issues persisting, we will have to give Fiki and his majestic team of programmers some additional time to iron out the remaining bugs, memory leaks, and other annoyances before we allow you all in. Trust us when we say that we don't want you to get hyped, enter the servers, and have an uncomfortable experience or have the servers crash. That would be awful, and we don't want to kill off your enjoyment like that.

------TL;DR? Start here-------
The programming department has stated that they will need some more time to fix these issues. Although we consider this to be able to be completed sooner rather than later, we need to take risks and possible further delays into account. If we do end up knowing when we're releasing Open Beta with absolute certainty, you bet we'll have you know when!  -- Remember, we could be done way sooner or later than expected! Check the devplatform for the most up-to-date status of the game and/or release predictions: http://dev.skylords.eu/

Another very important note: There has been some false information that has been spread through the community on several different platforms, causing a lot of unnecessary havoc and stress for both community and staff. We would like to remind you that you can find all relevant and correct news and announcements on our official social media, but most importantly forum posts that keep you up to date. Please do not blindly trust any dates or information given to you by community members that you don't know, especially if it sounds groundbreaking or impactful; if you can't find it on the forums, it's probably not true. Remember, content written by any member with a coloured name are staff posts; official announcements made by them are to be considered as true. Confused as to who is part of the team? Follow this link for a list: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/staff/

But there's some positive news too!
> The launcher is coming along nicely, and has been worked on separately from the server. That means that once server work is done, we won't also have to start making the launcher from scratch, which will save a lot of time!
> Many of you have expressed that they missed the original Booster Simulator. Now, the simulator is back in action and better than ever, integrated in our new cardbase, accurately supporting the booster ratios that will be in-game. Find it here: https://allcards.skylords.eu/booster.html
> Additionally, we have noticed a huge amount of questions for when Open Beta starts. Trust me when I say there will be a giant thread when Open Beta is released that will explain everything to you! Please be patient with your Open Beta questions until it starts; it will all be revealed.
> Feeling like you may have been too enthusiastic about Closed Beta giveaways? We will assure you that if you have been blacklisted on our Discord server and prevented from entering Closed Beta, your bans will be revoked and you will be given a second chance for Open Beta. Please don't break anything
> We have upgraded the forums to handle more traffic. You should all have a way smoother experience than before; our server was running at 220% CPU capacity, ouch! We're now running more smoothly, so you should experience faster loading times and a better overall connection to this website.
> During this upgrade, however, we almost lost the forum database because of all the problems linked to our server. We managed to save it just in time!
> The next big announcement we will make will be the Open Beta Announcement, which we will stream on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn). In the meantime, it is possible that we will stream some BattleForge on the official channel to give you an idea of how everything runs while we work on getting a good Open Beta working for you.
We would like to once again apologise for yet another delay and future vagueness on estimated times, and we would like to reassure you that it's healthier for the game's development, safety, stability, and enjoyability, as well as it is better for the health of the team, as we can take things easier on the moderation team, and allow the programmers to prioritise quality over time. We will do our utmost best to bring Open Beta to you as soon as we can, without the pains and frustrations and disappointment of further delays. We hope that you can understand and respect this decision, have the courage and determination to be patient for just a little longer, and that we may stand strong as a community, and that we may remain the most welcoming, friendly and comfortable community out there. Together we will soon reclaim the Forge and protect the lands of Nyn once again!
Sincerely, and on behalf of the entire Skylords Reborn Team,
MrXLink, your Community Manager

"Wasn't there a date in here?" Yes, that is correct, and we removed it for good reason. Refer to this post for details.

Hello Skylords,
As many of you are aware we were doing giveaways daily on our Discord #giveaway channel. Giveaways for Closed Beta Access is currently closed! It appears that some of you are confused by how to participate in these so I have decided to make this thread to help explain it.
First of all ALL giveaways happen on Discord in the #giveaway channel or on our forums here: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/forum/66-giveaways/
Giveaway Information
How do I enter a giveaway?
During our Discord giveaways you will get a notification as our bot will do an @everyone tag. The bot will already add all the possible needed emotes to the message so that you only have to click the emote which is needed. The needed emote is located under the "WHAT WE NEED" field. (see photo below)

NOTE: If you have two or more, or one invalid emote then your vote isn't counted.
What are the possible emotes needed?

NOTE: These are just a few examples of some of the emotes that you may need to react with during the giveaways.
Participants?
The Participants field shows the number of Discord users currently participating in the giveaway. However, this does not mean, that all the votes are valid. Maybe there are some users who added more than one emote or the wrong emote which is not needed at the current time. (see photo below)

Valid votes?
The Valid votes field shows the votes which are actually valid. (see photo below)

Valid votes are the votes of all the users who reacted to the emote which is displayed in the message. (see photo below)

NOTE: In this example the emotions in the red square are incorrect as they are not the same emote as the "What we need". Whereas the emote in the green square matches the "What we need" emote therefore it is correct.
What is my chance at winning the giveaway?
You can see your calculated chance in the field Chance which is a percent. Everyone has the same chance to win the giveaway on our Discord server. (see photo below).

Giveaways on our Forums we try to give those who are more active and contribute to the project a bit of a higher chance.
But you can be happy... There will soon be a big update to the giveaway system where active players will have a way higher chance than inactive or AFK players. But it could still be the same chance if everyone is on standby to see if the needed emote changed. At the end of each giveaway you will be notified if you won the giveaway. (see photo below). The bot will mention you in the giveaway channel and automatically adds you to the Closed Beta Testers Discord group. You will then have access to all the needed files and discussions of the closed beta.

Timer?
The timer could be set to be visible for all (which makes no sense at the current state of the giveaway) and is currently hidden during the whole giveaway. (see photo below)

Who can enter giveaways?
Only Discord users who are not a member of any of the staff groups (Administrator, Community Manager, Moderator or Developer) can take part in the giveaway. Of course users who are already a Closed Beta Tester (CBT) are excluded as well.
How long do the giveaways last?
They last around 5-7 minutes.
Are giveaways rigged?
No, the giveaways are only started by staff the bot does everything else, it picks what emotions are needed and even picks the winner at random.
Can you start a giveaway?
This dreaded question. Staff are constantly getting asked to start giveaways even though it has been said we will do them randomly. Please have patience we are human and have other commitments. Also note if you keep annoying staff in pm or in chats we will just eventually ignore you or even black list you (which means you will be banned from all giveaways). We also require InsaneHawk's computer to be online in order to start giveaways (as the bot is ran from his computer and it is needed for the giveaways).
Feeling salty?
We get that not winning a giveaway is upsetting but that doesn't mean you can go around being rude to one another or even towards the staff and project. We are doing our best to make it as fair as we can for everyone. We hope you understand that.
Didn't win this time?
If you didn't win this time don't give up, we are doing more than one giveaway each day at random times to try and meet every time zone possible. Keep up hope it could be you next time.
Being naughty?
If you're caught using multiple accounts to enter giveaways, they will all automatically be blacklisted so please don't. Let's make it fair for everyone. If you keep spamming and harassing staff asking for giveaways you will automatically be blacklisted so please don't.

Update from Ultrakool:
The only way to donate to skylords reborn now is through Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/skylordsreborn
You can also find it in the navigational bar of this forum
Original post:
Hi everybody !

This is the list of every people that donated to Skylords Reborn through PayPal donations! Thank you so much  We really appreciate your help & support

We cannot display amounts now, so we'll just maintain the list.

 
Baptiste / Forum Nickname : Alendorf TheSinEater Luis Alberto Daniel Marc ELADAX Edgar / Forum Nickname : Shock_Viper Martin Mathias Dennis Bastiaan Dexirian Jonathan Axel Malte Jiri Sun  Alexander / Forum Nickname : veryhasted Janek Forum Nickname : Czechmate23 Adam L. Forum Nickname : Omegabeat Christian Forum Nickname : Xitech Forum Nickname : Cetex Levin Forum Nickname : anonyme0273 Dominik André Jeffrey Forum Nickname : Anzu Markus Johannes Forum Nickname : Treim Mario Forum Nickname : PoYpOoY ExcelVBACourse Forum Nickname : ecillio Lars Herman Forum Nickname : rongreat2 Christoph Jedrzej Simon Forum Nickname : Helios sun Przemyslaw Skip Forum Nickname : WotdeFack Forum Nickname : PhoebusRevenio Daniel Henning Forum Nickname : Jodye Edvard Forum Nickname : Jett Forum Nickname : Ilsyde Tomas Scott Forum Nickname : Machutan Max Muhammad Daniel Hasan Michael Max Adrian Forum Nickname : HomieGoHome Finn Forum Nickname : Instigator Kevin Jonas lorenzo claudia Thomas Nickname : Zurakor Nickname : MeisterRihno Forum Nickname : Riviute Forum Nickname : Rakkhot Markus D. Florian G. Karsten D. Marcel K. Lucas M. Paul B. Nickname : Crocodile94 Nickname : MrBao Dominik Nickname : RA3E ALMSHAKL Nickname : Wavicane  
We love you guys ! Stay awesome

Edit : If you want us to hide your first name, contact us in PM

Sincerly,
Skylords Reborn Staff.

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies, and Skyfolks!
XLink here coming with another game design update. Now, it has come to our attention that a lot of you have been wondering what your booster odds are in Skylords Reborn. That is to say, what are your chances of getting different rarities of cards? I will provide you with answers to this debate, as an official ratio has been set up. We've had many questions as to what the exact rates are, and so I'll clear things up a bit, and explain why the ratio has changed.
The original BattleForge used a system where rare cards and ultra-rare cards are difficult to obtain. Boosters would give you 5 commons, 2 uncommons, and a rare or ultra-rare card at 16% (1/6) odds. This seems like a reasonable ratio. However, when I looked into the amount of cards in the game over the rarity given, it's noted that about 40% of all cards are Rare or Ultra Rare. This is a significant portion of all cards, that have a very low chance of being obtained.
Since we will not be exploiting a microtransaction system to siphon your money out through booster rarities, as well as with the spirit of being able to obtain cards quicker, easier and in a more satisfying and enjoyable manner, it's been decided that we increase the chance of getting rare cards in boosters, to let that 40% flow to the players more efficiently than by 16% of a booster at a time. It'll be easier to get that shiny loot! This has been the case since closed beta, and has been tested within closed beta, which has been quite a success. Many of you have asked what the exact ratio was, and we decided to keep it under the radar a bit for testing and changing purposes, but now that we have established a solid ratio, I'm publishing your odds right here. (this has been published before, but not definitively, in a beta thread) This does not mean that these are definitive. They are close to definitive, but in case of design flaws or the odds not turning out as we would have liked them to turn out, these ratios are subject to change; especially the promo ratio.
With these ratio changes I'm officially introducing our way of distributing promo cards; every booster will have a very small chance of granting a promo card. This way, everyone will have access to these elusive, extremely rare cards. We will also possibly use them as rewards for tournaments and official events. Seasonal promos, like Santa Claus and Easter Egg, will not be available in regular boosters.

With that all being said, here are the general odds for the card boosters in Skylords Reborn! The cards go from top left to bottom right.
Card 1: 0.5% Promo, 19.5% Ultra Rare, 80% Rare Card 2: 15% Rare, 85% Uncommon Card 3: 20% Uncommon, 80% Common Card 4: 100% Uncommon Cards 5, 6, 7 and 8: 100% Common This means that every single booster will provide you with up to 1 ultra-rare at a time, up to 2 rares at a time, and up to 3 uncommons at a time. If you get an Ultra Rare or a promo, there is still a chance you will get a rare. Getting 2 rares and 2 uncommons will therefore not be a strange sight, as it would have been in the original game. Remember that the promo ratio especially may be subject to change if we deem it too high or too low of a chance.
We hope that these new ratios will provide a quicker, more enjoyable and way more satisfying way of collecting cards, to kickstart the game more efficiently and make grinding and collecting a little more bearable, whilst sticking to the game's original mechanics.

In the nearby future, we will discuss the possibility of different types of boosters (e.g. editions, elements) and potential odds and card pools for them, internally. Stay tuned for more information on that in said nearby future. Booster prices will be discussed in the even more distant future, when the programming team is ready for it.
I hope to have informed you sufficiently on the new booster ratios. Be wary that this booster ratio has been calculated quite thoroughly and is pretty much definitive. Even small changes could throw the booster rarity ratios off balance; we have found these values to hit the sweet spot.
Feel free to let me know what you think and to discuss the topic below, taking the aforementioned statement in mind.
Stay tuned for future design updates, and may the forge be with you!

Sorry, people

Hello Skylords,
So now, let's talk about what we're going to do after all you will have to wait a bit longer, and please forgive us for this delay.

We have decided on a few things:
Everyone will receive 2 boosters once the game will be in open beta (you'll still get them even after a potential reset) From the 1st of February and until the Open beta, we'll invite some players everyday to the closed beta, to increase the amount of players, progressively (Giveaways will happen anytime during the day, morning, afternoon, evening ..) You'll be able from now to pre-download the client, and we finally after a lot of discussion decided to give the client here on the forum ourselves. Want to pre-download it ? You can use Mediafire or MEGA to download it! (You cannot start the game right now, you'll have to wait for open beta, and the release of our launcher to make it work.)  
 
INFORMATION : Giveaways for the Closed Beta will resume! These giveaways will mainly be held on Discord, but it may also happen on the forum, so keep following these two closely!
Discord : https://discord.gg/0y3WGMGXhd5q2lXA

With kind regards and apologies for any inconvenience caused,

Sincerely,
The Skylords Reborn Team

This is outdated. Please refer to this thread:
 
 

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and Skyfolks,
As many of you are aware, the project has entered an Open Stress Testing Phase (NOT OPEN BETA) on Wednesday 5th September 2018.
NOTE: There will be a wipe at some stage during/after the open stress testing phase.
Playing The Open Stress Test
You do not need to sign up to join the stress testing phase you just need to make an account on our forums and use the same email and password to log into the game.
Downloads
Client
You can download the client using Mediafire or MEGA.nz.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RE-DOWNLOAD THE CLIENT AT ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE AS THE UPDATER WILL HELP WITH THIS.
Skylords Reborn Updater
You can download the Skylords Reborn Updater using Mediafire.
Visual C++
You will need to make sure you have Visual C++ Redistributable for 2015 installed. You can download that here.
Our Official links
Our Official links can be found here Facebook, Twitter, Twitch and YouTube. We do not have any other official links.
Other Medias
The VK Skylords Reborn page is a fan made page, we will NEVER ask for any payments. Our old domain bfreborn.com has been bought by someone who is pretending to be this project.
Supporting the project
You can help support us if you wish on our Patreon page only. The game is 100% FREE. Note: All money from Patreon goes towards server upkeep.
Advertising
We are currently talking with streamers and a website in order to let the world know about this project. We however currently have no advertising budget.
Players can make videos or stream the Open stress test if they wish. All we ask of streamers is that they inform viewers that the game is currently in an Open stress testing stage that will be reset at the end along with it possibly containing bugs and crashes along with other issues and that a link to our Forums is provided so people can find out more about the project along with and possibly joining up themselves if they wish.
If you wish to help advertise this project you can simply by just telling your family and friends and getting them to play!
Recruitment
We're looking for a C++ developer to add to our team, the minimal requirements to apply: 
Good knowledge how to program (in at least one programming language) Ability to read C++17 code, and later C++20 You should have some experience with at least C++11 Good idea about threads and async operations  Basic idea about how TLS/SSL, DB, Boost. (no need for details, just basics) Have some free time to invest into the project Having some reverse engineering knowledge is always good, but not necessary Being familiar with Linux can be advantage too If you have the minimal requirements above, feel to apply on forum here (otherwise, please refrain)
Running / System Requirements
BattleForge is an old game so will run on basically anything. To see full spec details feel free to check out our Wiki page here, or you can check on the CYRI website here.
Giveaways
Giveaways are currently closed. We do hope to use them in the futrue for other giveaways and you will be able to take part in these by simply keeping an eye on our #giveaway channel on our Discord server and our giveaway section of the forums. To participate in the giveaway on our Discord you will normally need to react with the right emotion, beware it can change to a new one.
 
If you have any questions or queries please feel free to ask them below or send me or @MrXLink a PM and we will try our best to answer them as much as we can.
See you all in the forge! 
=============================
Important notes from @fiki574 regarding Open Stress Testing Phase:
Promo cards - Will be in booster packs, except for the event promos like Santa and Easter Egg which will be related to the seasonal event. Boosters - Boosters will be a mixture of all sets for now. Speed run / map of the month - Will be available at start of Open Stress Test. Starter decks - You will start with 4 different starter decks, one of each color (Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow). Tomes - Tomes will not be in Skylords Reborn at all. New accounts - All players will have new accounts and will be named the same as their Forum account this is due to us not having access to the data files from EA regarding accounts.