'Vanguard: Saga of Heroes' Finally Makes the Switch to Free-to-Play

Game Rant

By GR Staff

Published Apr 10, 2012

Although many thought it might be another MMO casualty, 'Vanguard: Saga of Heroes' will live on as another free-to-play game this summer.

It has been a long time since Game Rant has had a story on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. In fact, it's been a pretty long time since anyone has heard a word from the long overlooked Sony Online Entertainment MMO, but after years of almost complete silence, the developers behind Vanguard have announced that the game will be going free-to-play this summer.

For those of you that have kept up with the long, troubled history of Vanguard (all three of you), you are probably aware that the game was basically a failure for Sigil Games Online right out of the gate. The game released to mixed negative critical reception - not regarding the content of the game, but the abundance of bugs scattered throughout Telon, the world of Vanguard.

Although the dev team managed to patch virtually every game-breaking bug within a couple months, the damage had been done, and Vanguard all but fell off the map. Sony picked up the game from Sigil Games and set it in a corner. A dedicated group of subscription-paying fans have stayed active on the servers ever since, with hardly a peep from anyone on the development side of the game indicating whether updates, patches, and future content would be making their way to the forgotten MMO.

Finally, almost five years after the game's initial launch, SOE is setting Vanguard free. This has become fairly common in the MMO world, and Vanguard will be joining three of Sony's flagship MMOs in the free-to-play realm: EverQuest, EverQuest 2, and DC Universe Online. After the announcement of EverQuest Online Adventures' closure about a month ago, many Vanguard players on the official forums began to worry that their game might be nearing a similar fate.

Thankfully, Vanguard will live on, and according to a letter from the producer, game updates are going to go up from non-existent to fairly frequent. The team running Vanguard is growing, slowly but surely, and life might be brought back to Telon once again this summer when the game is free.

If you have never checked out Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, I highly recommend you give it a try this summer when it relaunches. The world is enormous and beautiful, the three spheres are a unique way to play through an MMO, and the community has always been a varied and helpful group of people. This year might be inundated with MMOs, but Vanguard is worth a look.

Source: Massively