Lead Designer Salim "Silius" Grant may have announced last month that the Vanguard team was shelving some planned features due to limited resources, but that's not stopping them from acknowledging the game's third anniversary this month. In honor of the occasion, the Vanguard Anniversary Gift Pack is now available to pick up from the Historian of Telon in New Targonor, Ahgram, or Tawar Galan.

The gift pack contains numerous items and a scroll that grants the anniversary title of "Luminary." You can read the full contents of the pack after the jump.

Lead Designer Salim "Silius" Grant has has made a lengthy post outlining the future of Vanguard, and it honestly looks a bit rough. "We are trying to pull back on some of the more ambitious features due to resource limitations," Grant said. He followed that statement by confirming that Alternate Advancement, the Halls of Shattered Souls, Stiirhaad Mountains, Pankor Zhi and Nexus have been "shelved indefinitely."

Grant said that the team will be focusing on bug fixes and more frequent content releases, and also noted that a server merge is being considered. Players don't appear happy with the news, and the post has already received 24 pages of generally unfavorable responses.

You can read Grant's full letter after the jump. What do you think the future holds for Vanguard?

Once again, the Vanguard development team has taken the time to answer the top 10 questions from the community. While the Q&A doesn't provided many concrete details, it does confirm that the team is currently reevaluating some planned projects and hopes to have a plan finished soon in regards to the "next big project on the table."

In addition, the team states that the proposed haste change for the auto attack system has been shelved. You can read the full Q&A after the jump.

The newest edition of the Telonian Tribune has been posted on the official Vanguard site, and this one is actually a Q&A with the development team. The questions were selected by the community as the top 10 questions that currently need answers.

The answers are mainly short and to the point. For example, the cost of POTA T2 and T3 armor will be lowered as part of the Christmas patch, and the ability to equip harvesting bags on the harvesting character sheet has been approved. You can read the full Q&A after the jump.

The newest Vanguard patch has introduced a mentoring system to the game that lets players sync their level with a low-level friend so they can group together across Telon. All a player needs to do is group with anyone five or more levels below them to become a mentor. A mentor's abilities and stats will scale down, but experience will be gained as normal.

Up to five players can mentor one person at the same time, which means a group of friends can all enjoy the new program together. Sony Online Entertainment invites new players to try out the Vanguard 14-day free trial in conjuntion with the new mentoring program to get a helping hand in the game.

More information on the mentoring program can be found after the jump.

As we reported, the Vanguard development team recently listed a bunch of changes being made to the Disciple and Necromancer in order to help address some class balancing issues. Well, the Telonian Tribune just listed the Shaman changes that you'll currently find on the test server.

The list summarizes a whopping 41 changes being made to Shamans, including an increase in potency to the Lethargy line and the ability to have your "pet out when shape changing to the skin of their patron and vice versa." Check out the full list of changes after the jump.

It looks like the Vanguard development team has been busy working on some class balancing issues, and the first two classes to be tackled were the Disciple and the Necromancer. The long list of changes was outlined in the most recent edition of the Telonian Tribune on the game's official Web site.

Necromancers received a ton of changes, including a bunch to minions. For example, minions will now last up to 24 hours and have had their HP values doubled. Also, level 53+ Necromancers may now have up to three minions. The Disciple changes include updates to Inner Light, Feign Death, Paralyzing Sweep and other abilities.

Check out the all of the changes for both classes after the jump.

After a long wait, the Vanguard team has posted concept art of the Druid, Necromancer and Sorcerer weapon sets. Each set features a main hand and off hand weapon.

These three classes have been waiting for awhile to get a glimpse of their weapons, which the team addressed in the post: "You might have thought that we forgot about 3 certain classes when we were featuring some of the new weaponry. Never fear, this week we were able to wrangle the final 3 weapon set ups for everyone to check out in all their glory."

Vanguard developers have once again taken the time to answers questions submitted by fans, and this Q&A session focuses on the top 10 questions as ranked by the game's community members.

According to the developers, new raiding content will be available when the Halls of Shattered Souls launches in the next couple of months. As for more casual dungeons, they're planning on working on Pankor Zhi in the future. There are no current plans to expand song compenents for bards, but steps may be taken to help PvP gameplay if the team gets more resources.

You can read the full Q&A session after the jump.

The Vanguard developers have answered a new series of questions submitted by community members, and they provide some general comments on their future plans. For example, they may possibly implement more items with platinum coins in the future, and they are revamping the salamander caves to give players level 52 and up some more content.

As far as veteran rewards for loyal players are concerned, the dev team says they would have to be fluff items that won't imbalance the game, but didn't mention if such items will actually be implemented. They are reviewing the block forumula and varying blocks for the tank classes and will continue to adjust and add more storage space to the game globally.

You can read the full Q&A after the jump.