Official Discussion: Helm's Deep NDA Drop.

[Sapience]

Are the Beta Forums now open for people, who could not access them before?

They are not. The NDA has been lifted, but the beta is still a closed beta.

Epic Battles= Skirmishes 3.0;

All involve daily locks on each quest (the side quests you get inside are random). Random jewelery rewards. No way to earn specific Epic Battles rewards.
While on cooldown all you can get are marks and medallions. You cannot get XP.

I think, as the devs have mentioned, that they're a lot more than just a new version of skirmishes and if they had to compare them to Skirms they'd probably label them 4.0 or 5.0. They're that different from what people think of as a skirmish at this point.

Class Changes: Big and sweeping, and undoubtedly controversial. The most important thing with these is to give them a chance. They are very different to what we have on live, but the core elements of classes remain intact. Skills may be gated or found on the trees, while others are merged or accessed via procs, etc. After the initial shock wears off, you may find you really like the changes. I know I do. Not only have skills generally been improved, but cooldowns have been mostly decreased across the board. All classes also have a slew of new skills, specific to various trait trees.

-Bel

This is actually very much what we have heard from the majority of players. I'll also mention that a lot of the final form of the classes and which skills are in which tree and the skills that found their way into the general pool are there in no small part to player feedback. There have been literally hundreds upon hundreds of changes made to the trees and their organization. Some literally ripped right from player feedback threads and put in game.