Vanguard going free-to-play

Sony Online Entertainment, a week after completing the free to play transformation of Everquest, announced today that another of its MMORPGs, Vanguard is going free-to-play later this year. With this announcement, producer Andy Sites also announced a new content update coming next week. 

Vanguard is going free to play

SOE has been transforming its MMORPGs to free to play. As the business model works good for majority of the game publishers, the latest MMORPG to join the f2p party is Vanguard.

In the latest producer letter, Vanguard's director of development Andy Sites announced the transformation. He also says the game will receive more frequent content updates in 2012.

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.

Why free to play? And why now?

These are all good news for gamers but when you think twice, there is also another reason to all these transformations. I don't see games like Everquest or Vanguard surviving too long if they didn't decide to switch to the free to play model. Think about it: With all the games like SWTOR, and soon to be released TERA and Guild Wars 2 and all the other free to play MMOs, it would be foolish to keep older titles like Everquest and Vanguard as subscription-based games. There are also the latest research results that show how good (most of them) the free to play MMOs are doing better than subscription based games. Also read our story of World of Tanks revenues from Monday. 

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