A quick update on what the Vanguard team's been working on!

As all of you gamers are aware, the summer months bring with them a lot of events and conventions where we can have a good time and show off our stuff! This summer wasn't an exception, and our newest addition to the Vanguard development team, Ichie, made his way to E3 to show off our favorite game! While there, he followed guilds on live raids while many passersby marveled at Vanguard.

SOE's 3rd annual Block Party also gave prospective new players a chance to check out Vanguard's upcoming trial version, Isle of Dawn. Tiraslee, Ichie, and Vanguard artist Chris A. were all on hand to answer questions about the game, most from people who hadn't played in a while, and were really impressed with just how far the game has come.

Of course, conventions and demo's aren't all we've been up to – Game Update 6 should be headed to the Test server soon, and with it players can expect to get a glimpse of the new character models and have a nearly bug-free experience in Telon! GU6 will contain the largest bug fix that Vanguard has ever experienced. The development team has logged well over a thousand bug fixes for this update, and the number is still growing!

The art team has had the pleasure of employing two summer interns, who are very talented artists hoping to work in the industry. Hopefully we'll have an interview with them soon, and show off some of the great concept art they've drafted – but in the meantime, you can see that they're working on some new "monk-like" armor that will eventually make its way into the game (and utilize the new character models!)

Ichie, who we can thank for the recent MEST quests, is working on something relating to Haelfury (among other things). He only displayed a wry grin when mentioning that, and then quickly went back to work. After 1,642.314 bug fixes – he must be happy to be switching gears onto something a bit more entertaining.

Avair's been conducting some DPS testing lately, and reading the best forums around!

We'll continue to keep you updated on what everyone's working on! For a look at the 'big-picture', you can read the July Producer's Letter.

Hey all,

It's been a while since we had one of these, so we figured it was about time to give everyone a little more insight into what exactly is going on with Vanguard now and what will be happening over the course of the next couple of months. So… let's get right to it then!

State of the Game
As most folks probably already know, we've just recently started what we internally call a "win back program". As one might assume from the name, the goal is to bring back former players who for whatever reason quit the game. To that end, we've turned on all cancelled or closed accounts this month to let those players come back and see everything that has changed in Vanguard over the course of the last year and a half.

So far we've been really happy by the results and for anyone who has spent time in game lately, especially around one of the starting cities you'll likely notice a lot more new faces popping up. With all the bug fixing, performance increases, new features (like flying and racial mounts) and just general polish that has been done over the last year, we're expecting good things from this campaign to get folks to give Vanguard another look.

Additionally, we're also hard at work on three big new items right now – the Isle of Dawn ( Trial Island ), Game Update six and the second phase of the character model revamp. The plan was always to release them all when they were ready, and we are working on each as a separate entity unto itself. However, with the way things are shaping up it is looking like rather than having to space them out and keep folks waiting we will actually be able to launch them all at the same time. So depending on how you'd like to look at it, Game Update six could be considered a mega-update of sorts.

We know folks are going to want to know what date this stuff will be launching, and while we like to avoid setting exact dates in stone this far out we can say that you can expect all three things very shortly after the Las Vegas Fan Faire (which takes place on August 14-17th – and you're all coming, right!?).

Now, we realize that is about six weeks away still but these are some pretty significant updates and we want to make sure we take the time to get them right before sending it live for you guys. For anyone who is interested, some of this stuff will start popping up on the test server in the very near future (and we will give updates on that as it happens).

We also realize that now that we've got everyone excited about this stuff that making everyone wait is kind of a mean thing to do. So we're also going to be doing a much smaller update sometime between now and then that will add some smaller new stuff (like factional armor rewards among other things). More details on that will be coming shortly.

So with that, let's get in to a little more detail…

Isle of Dawn
As most folks already know, the Isle of Dawn will not only serve as a trial for new Vanguard players (with content that runs through the first ten levels of the game in all three spheres) but it will also serve as a new starting city for existing players.

Everyone will still get to select to start in their own racial city if they'd like to, but the option to begin your adventures on the Isle of Dawn will also be present. The Isle will represent the new standard to which we hold content coming into the game and should raise the bar significantly. Even if you happen to love a particular starting city already, we'd highly recommend running through the Isle of Dawn at least once.

One question a lot of folks have about the Isle though is what benefit it gives existing players. Sure, it'll be very helpful to newer players coming back to the game but what will it do for people already here? Well, aside of the obvious in offering a brand new starting city it's also going to not only be introducing a lot more people (and potential group or guild mates) into the game but it will be putting them on a more guided path through Telon once they leave the island.

Players will always be able to choose wherever they go, of course, but we're also going to be revamping each of the three possible locations you can depart trial island to (one on each continent) and as a part of those revamps giving players a much better idea of which directions they could be headed in, instead of just sort of spinning them around and then giving them a shove.

Finally, here's a little bit of what to expect as far as storyline goes:

Currently, three different groups of beings inhabit the Isle of Dawn. A village of battle hardened humans and a band of zealot hobgoblins have warred against each other for centuries on the Isle. Their mutual hatred for one another runs deep and even now they are locked in an ongoing struggle. Recently though, increasing numbers of ulvari have begun to surface on the island – much to the dismay of both the humans and the hobgoblins.

Weakened by their perpetual war, the humans aren't able to capably defend themselves. Even now, their villages burn as they frantically seek aid. The isle is in desperate need of heroes.

…and that'd be where you come in.

Character Revamp Phase 2.0
This one has a lot of folks on the forums talking as of late. We'll be posting more screenshots of what the new models will look like in the future and it won't be much longer until they're on the test server either.

For those who aren't aware of what we're doing with the character models -- this is actually the second phase of the model revamp. In the first face we had to take some customization options away (for a variety of reasons) which we didn't like doing anymore than most players liked having it happen. Fortunately, this time around we'll be adding some more back in – and on top of that the way the player bodies look will be improving a good deal as well.

Vanguard is a game about heroes. It's right there in the title even – Saga of Heroes. We're making it so players' character models look more heroic than they have in the past. This means that characters will have more definition and will just be able to look not only cooler but tougher in general.

Game Update Six
As if the Isle of Dawn and character model revamps weren't enough, we've also got a full sized update coming out on top of that. As it gets closer to getting on test, we'll be posting a more detailed write-up like we normally do, but a few things players can look forward to include:

• A revamped and high level Pantheon of the Ancients featuring both group and raid content *update 6 or 6.1
• A new overland raid (Varking) *update 6 or 6.1
• The long awaited flat damage bug fix
• More class updates (including revamps of the Disciple and Sorcerer classes)
• More performance optimizations
• Lots of bug fixing



Even though everything listed above is going to be keeping both you and us busy for the immediate future, we've always got to be thinking ahead about what we're going to do next. At this point it's far too early to give specific release dates or low level details but we can help give everyone a better idea of the direction we'll be headed in.

At the high end, we recognize the need to keep adding content as more players reach higher levels and finish up existing content. So that will be one of our focuses, and you should expect to see both existing areas get revamped and entirely new areas be added in (such as the Nexus dungeon that Silius mentioned recently in the House of Commons chat and on the forums).

Overland raids spaced out in between the bigger stuff will continue to be released as well as some attention going to areas that aren't necessarily high level in order to clean them up and add a layer of polish – and we can't forget about fishing!

We'd like to start doing these letters a little more frequently than we have in the past as well as be more active in the community as a whole (not just on the forums) so stay tuned for more on the post GU6 stuff and definitely make sure to follow next month's Fan Faire coverage as we'll likely be talking a lot about what the future has in store for Vanguard.

That's it for now, please head over to the forums and ask any questions you may have – we'll be on there doing our best to answer them.

Thanks!

-The Vanguard Team