Another MMO going free-to-play: SOE’s Vanguard

Sony Online Entertainment is going towards converting another of its subscription-based virtual world into a free-to-play MMORPG. After EverQuest and DC Universe Online, now comes the time for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes to follow suit.

SOE’s Director of Development, Andy Sites, made the announcement on Friday after thanking the fan base for their support over the last five years.

Going back in time, 2007 marked the launch of the game on PC, however it produced mostly negative reviews with 242,000 copies having been sold initially. Over the following three years the team fought to solve various performance issues which lead to more criticism. In the end, the game’s player base was reduced so much that SOE was forced to merge three of its remaining US servers into one during July 2010, reducing the worldwide number of servers to a the single-digit number of two. Although, on a sort of brighter note, last year, after new content and two updates were released, the population began to pick up.

“We’ve had a dry spell of game updates over the past few months,” Sites reports in his update. “That said, I’m happy to announce the drought will be coming to an end this week, with our first scheduled update since last December.  We plan to roll out game updates MUCH more frequently than years past, which will include general improvements, new content and more.”

“A few weeks ago, we began ramping up the Vanguard development team with some familiar faces.  Our criteria was simple; we wanted the most Vanguard-knowledgeable, passionate developers,” he continues. “While we plan to continue growing the team over the next few months, I wanted to briefly introduce a few of our team leads, including Salim “Silius” Grant (Creative Director), Todd “Hobart” Schmidt (Technical Director) and me, Andy Sites (Director of Development).  Fortunately, I am the only noob to the world of Vanguard, although having been part of the original EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms, and Clone Wars Adventures teams, I’ve spent most of my career working on MMOs.”

As for the free-to-play mode, specific details weren’t revealed, it was only stated that something similar to what was done with EverQuest, EverQuest 2 and DC Universe Online is to be expected. As for when it will come, it’s expected for this summer, in the mean time, the fans should see additional game updates and more information about the F2P model over the next few weeks.

Source: Tom’s Hardware