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Important: Open Beta Status Announcement


MrXLink

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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.

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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 ♥

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Hi all,

I would like to thank you for all the :hype: and encouragement you have given us, it has been a pleasure seeing the popularity of this open beta. Unfortunately, like Link mentioned, unforeseen bugs prevent us from keeping to the release date, and for that I am personally really sorry and seek your forgiveness. We all, and Fiki especially, have been working countless hours everyday to try to keep to this promise, but unfortunately in development, the Murphy’s Law often applies and in this case it sadly did. I hope you can find it in your hearts to support us through this, and we will come out of this stronger than  ever together as a community.

Ultrakool

MeatyChi, Toreon, Quatres and 16 others like this
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All things considered, you're all doing an amazing jobs, and a couple of weeks or months more wont matter! It is nice for you to take us all into consideration, but you really do not owe us anything.

SneakyEdit: No matter what happens, we're all extremely glad for your progress and to have been close just makes us all more hype. A small setback is nothing compared to the potential joy you will be bringing thousands of people when their childhood goes back online. If it flops or fails? Who cares, what've all build is truly something extraordinary.

:hypetrain:

Edited by PlainVenom
Wanted to add more
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You are doing an amazing job!

Take your time and relax.

Maybe you should take out the ban hammer und kick those people out that are complaining all the time.

I'm waiting 5 years for BF to come back, I don't mind if it takes another month or year. It's your project and your free time, so do it your way and don't listen to the crybabies :)

<3 for everyone, you are awesome

Mallados, Dragon, Ecarus and 1 other like this
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while yes it IS a bit disappointing, i fully understand and feel no need to complain, given the nature of the project stuff like this can easily happen

im no developer but im aware of the rigors of said field of work

hope it happens sooner but if it doesnt, we just wait it out

thanks for the update though!

and as BFlove said, yes, id rather it not crash all the dang time, the mild inconvenience of waiting a few weeks is far less frustrating in comparison!

best of luck dev team and be sure to keep us informed!

GottesRache likes this
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The fact that we even get the opportunity to play this game again at some point is amazing. While I understand the impatience of some fans, they seem to forget that all this wouldn't even happen at all if it wasn't for you guys!

This is definitely the right decision. The well-being of the team is much more important than this game.

Karl Jakobis likes this
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I could be very sour ... More than sour. But it's more of a sadness that I can not play games. It's just a damn good game
Therefore, I wish the Dev Team continued to do good work and good luck, the game is finally playable. Because nothing is better than a (almost) bug-free game.

Edited by Lotte2525
Stahlos and Chibiterasu like this
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You guys take the time you need. I understand how stressful it can get ,especially in thoses times of high "hypeness" level. All i wish is for you guys to suceed, but i don't want us to stress you guys out.

We have been waiting for many years, and we will be able to wait more. The hype train will never stop, and we will always be behind you to support you guys.

We have faith in you, as you guys can have faith in your community to help you as much as we can! 

Good luck to you guys to finish this big project, the end is nigh, as well as the begining of something huge! 

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@Ultrakool @InsaneHawk  @MrXLink @Kiwi @fiki574 Personally, there is no need to apologise! I love you all like brothers and I don't mind it that there is a delay. In fact, we need to thank you all for doing all this excellent and hard work for us with bringing the game back! And Not just bring it back, but also making it better! I know it must be somtimes hard for y'all but never get your heads down & always go on! keep thinking positive and remember, when you are down, the only way to go is up!

You're all doing a great job & far better than most ppl or leading game companies would tbh xd we can count on you unlike other people in this world.
You can make delays as much as you want, I'll always be here to support every1 in whatever times that will come and aid where I can.

Forget all those negative people and those yelling at you or swearing at you, just ignore them, the only thing they are doing is making you even more famous and loved because of the support you'll get of the good members in here.

I believe in all of you and I just know you can do it! <3 

Alstar, Ultrakool, Easy and 1 other like this
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Im fine with the delay, take your time.
 

11 hours ago, MrXLink said:

Please allow 3-4 weeks of this!  -- Remember, this is a very rough estimation; we could be done way sooner than expected!


Dangerous statement, if something should come in between, the air will burn. 

Edited by ImperatorSK
Eyarege likes this
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Thanks guys for update. To be honest i am not dissapointed that release has been postponed again, maybe I am little bit exausted from all the :hype: , but that is okay. It only shows my (and probably others) dedication to see this project being released in its best shape possible. Deadlines are stressfull for everyone, I hope Patreons and everyone else understands that this whole delay is equally annoying for us the players and for project staff. 

Forgot to mention that even big game companies have serious issues with announcing release dates and then postponing them. 

Just look at the Valve https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

or Blizzard https://wow.gamepedia.com/Blizzard_Time

imagine the buthurt that was caused by delaying DOTA2 release two times for a total of 2,5 years. But now hardly anyone remembers about it. Really hope that same will apply to you guys (not the 2,5 years of delay, of course :D:D:D ).

 

Good luck hunting those pesky bugs and see you in forge!!

Edit: few spelling errors. Added last paragraph and links

Edited by Modex
Mallados likes this
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