Vanguard Producer's Letter also introduces development team members.

In the latest Producer Letter, Vanguard Director of Development Andy Sites announced that Vanguard would be going free to play.  And if that were not exciting enough, Andy said Vanguard's game update drought is ending and introduced new and returning development team members!

You can read the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Free to Play Announcement FAQ on the Vanguard forums.  Read the entire Producer's Letter after the jump.

We've got some exciting changes in store for Vanguard!

Since many, if not all of you reading this letter are the most die-hard of Vanguard players, let me start off by saying thank you for your unwavering support of the game!  Let's talk about the great things we have planned over the next few months...
Vanguard going Free-to-Play

At SOE, giving players choices is the theme of how we're moving forward as a company. We see free-to-play (or as we refer to it, Free to Play. Your Way.) as a big part of our future and we like the flexibility it offers players. Therefore, I'm happy to announce Vanguard will be the next in line of our AAA games to make this transition.  Since we've literally just begun on the work, I'm not ready to go into much detail.  However, I will say that you can expect something similar to EverQuest®, EverQuest® II and DC Universe™ Online when we roll-out our free-to-play offering this summer.  Once we have more information to share, you'll be the first to know.
Getting the band back together...

Now for the part I'm most excited about, let's talk about the great team of developers we've assembled.  To begin (and I realize I'm stating the obvious) we've had a dry spell of game updates over the past few months.  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.  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.

Over the next several weeks, we plan to roll-out individual "spotlight" pieces for each team member, to give you an opportunity to get to know each of them.  In addition, you can expect to see more frequent game updates, as well as more detailed information regarding the upcoming free-to-play aspects of Vanguard.

Talk to you soon and we'll see you online!

Andy Sites
Director of Development