The Vanguard July 2012 Producer's Letter shares the news that the MMORPG is "approaching the final stretch" of its switch to free-to-play. They are now revealing more about how this will work. Here's a bit:

Today, we’ve released our free-to-play feature matrix and FAQ (available here) including answers to some of your previous questions, along with information about the upcoming free-to-play transition. A huge thank you to the Vanguard community for your ongoing and helpful feedback (we really are listening so please keep sending us your thoughts!). Your feedback combined with our previous experience transitioning legacy games over to our Free to Play. Your Way model contributed to the development of what we think is the best free-to-play strategy for Vanguard and our players in that we will be providing the most compelling offer for both free and subscribing players.

Many of the matrix features may look familiar as they closely mirror Sony Online Entertainment’s other free-to-play games in that we’re offering more flexible options for every type of player, however, there are a few differences; most obvious being the number of membership tiers. Aside from our free-to-play offering, we determined it was in the best interest of our players to eliminate the Silver membership and instead provide primarily a Gold membership offering. In doing so, we’ve moved a few elements which would normally fall under a subscription category, and opened them up to the players for free.