Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a high fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Sigil Games Online, and now developed and run by Sony Online Entertainment. Originally, the game was co-published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), and the company producing it, Sigil Games Online. The game was released on January 30, 2007, with an early access date of January 26, 2007 for pre-order customers. On May 15, 2007, it was announced in a press release that Sony Online Entertainment had completed a transaction to purchase key assets of Sigil Games Online, including all rights to Vanguard.

The game initially sold around 242,000 copies, while the number of active subscriptions (those who play longer than the free month included when buying the game) was estimated to be around 130,000, to drop in the next months to about 40,000. For much of 2009 the population of Vanguard was almost non-existent. Though recently, after some changes in the game to make it more stable, the population has started to rise again and it has a noticeably larger in-game player presence.

Following the acquisition by SOE, the developers mainly focused on bug fixes and gameplay improvements for a long time. In July 2008, the developers announced they wanted to attract old and new players as the game had reached a much more presentable state. On September 10, 2008, Game Update 6 finally introduced the long awaited trial island, the Isle of Dawn, which also quickly became the standard starting area for new regular characters. On October 8, 2008, the trial version was released.

On Mar 12 2009, SOE announced that it would add its LiveGamer Exchange RMT (real money trading) service to Vanguard, which allows trading game money, items, and whole characters between players, for real currency.

On Jul 7 2010 the three remaining US game servers were merged into one, bringing the total number of Vanguard servers down to two.

After a long hiatus, new game content was announced at the end of July 2011. A game update was released on Aug 10, 2011, with another at Aug 24, 2011. On March 21, 2012, SOE announced that Vanguard would become free to play in summer 2012. As of August 14th, 2012, Vanguard has been made free to play.

Read more about Vanguard: Saga Of HeroesGameplay, The Game World: Telon, Servers, Development History, Game Updates, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) Involvement, Community, Reception