Yes, and they’re not giving away ponies, either

Quoth Lighthouse (emphasis mine):

It is true that there are no free character respecs with Issue 8. However, Veteran players who have played over 9 months will receive one free one per character that way, and Veteran players with 21 months (1 year, 9 months) will receive a second free one per character.

Everyone will be receiving a free respec in an update that will follow Issue 8. Castle talked about some of the changes included in this coming update on the blaster forums a bit here where he talked about some buffs to some blaster stuff. Because there will be these, and other, power changes,
it will warrant a free respec for everyone.

So, we understand that everyone likes free respecs, but please understand that we only give them out when there are changes to powers that might lead people to want to change their builds because of those changes.

This isn’t stopping people from complaining that they aren’t getting freespecs every other Friday, or that the ones that are coming with VR will (gasp!) require you to actually go someplace to get it, and they aren’t giving away any plastic rocket ships or ponies, either! DOOOM!