The Year of Retention: An Update on our Development Plans

Hey everyone! Manu here. It’s been a while since our last devlog entry, and there’s been a lot of internal discussion lately about the direction our future updates are taking. We thought this would be a good opportunity to pull back the curtain a little and talk about our future plans, our current priorities, and how all of this is shaping an updated roadmap.

There are some important changes coming to our development plans. We know that hearing the words “roadmap changes” can be a little scary, especially when some of you have been eagerly waiting for particular features. So we want to explain exactly what is changing, why we believe it is the right decision for Eterspire, and what you can expect from us over the coming months.

This is going to be a long post, so brace yourselves! But first, a helpful TLDR for those who just need a quick rundown:

TL;DR

We’re adjusting the Engineering side of our roadmap so we can spend the next few months improving some of the most fundamental parts of the Eterspire experience: Moment-to-moment gameplay, engaging encounter design, and performance, all with the goal of drastically improving our retention.

This means that several previously announced Engineering features will be released later than originally planned. Woodcutting is still planned to be released on schedule. The Daily Quest system is also still coming, but we want to release it after we’ve addressed some of the core issues that could prevent it from being as effective, or as enjoyable, as it should be.

All of the other points in our Roadmap for July and August 2026 will be moved. They are not being canceled. We still want to release them, and we still believe they are important. They simply won’t be released with the timing we previously expected.

Most importantly, we’re not changing plans because we no longer care about the features on the roadmap. We’re changing them because, for Eterspire to be healthy in the long term, we need more players to enjoy the game, return frequently, and stick around. This is absolutely fundamental for an MMORPG like Eterspire.

Within the next week or two, we’ll publish an updated roadmap covering the rest of Q3 and part of Q4. It will reflect these new priorities and give you a clearer idea of what we’ll be working on over the next few months.

With the TL;DR out of the way, let’s get right to the bones!

The Year of Retention

At the beginning of 2026, we internally named this “The Year of Retention.”

Retention, in very simple terms, means giving players reasons to continue playing, return more frequently, and remain part of the game for longer.

The only surviving image of the "Year of USER RETENTION" sign we stuck to the wall of our old office and that was sadly lost when we moved to our current one :(

Fish & Guilds: A Behind the Scenes Look at the End of Q1 2026

Hey there! I’m Lartu. It’s been a bit since the last time I wrote an entry here. Today I’d like to talk about the final milestones of the Q1 2026 roadmap, the Fishing Rework and Guilds, and a few other things we’ve been discussing here at Stonehollow Workshop. This is going to be a long post, so brace yourself!

Bigger Team, Bigger Office!

These past couple of months have been very busy for us, both on the development side of things, and also when it comes to Stonehollow Workshop as a company.

We’ve not only been working on a bunch of new quests, several new features, the recently redesigned wiki, the Easter event, and the “PvP” event (hehe), but we also moved to a new office, implemented a new office schedule, and added several new members to our team.

Our new office before we covered the walls with your lovely Eterspire fanart.

We’re now a total of 16 people working on Eterspire. That’s so many! We were only 6 people a year ago, and just 3 at the beginning of 2024. This growth has allowed us to tackle bigger features, move faster in some areas, and continue growing the game and its community in ways that simply wouldn’t have been possible before. But, of course, growth also comes with its own challenges. 

A big part of the beginning of 2026 was spent onboarding all of our new team members, getting them familiar with our tools, our stack, our processes, and, naturally, Eterspire itself.

Luckily, all of our new members have been excellent additions to the team, and they’re already bringing a lot to the table. We now have dedicated Content Creation, Engineering, and Community & Communications teams, each with their own responsibilities and increasingly established processes. This should allow us to put out higher quality updates, communicate more clearly, and keep building a better Eterspire in a more organized and sustainable way. In the last update, we released three quests at once. THREE. This would have been unthinkable just a month ago. It’s unbelievable, we cannot be happier!

But all that said, growing hasn’t been the only challenge we’ve faced in 2026. It’s been a challenging year so far, and that has impacted our Q1 2026 roadmap a bit.

The Humble Beginnings of the Eterspire Community

Hi everyone! I’m Manu, and this is my first… entry? post? article? on our dev blog.

Since we’ve just hit 15,000 members on our official Discord community server (wow, I still can’t believe there are that many people now!), I thought I’d share some interesting facts and stories from the early days of this community.

I’ve been part of the Stonehollow Workshop team for almost three years now, and many of you probably know me as the dev who hates on the Rogue class, rants about Argentine cuisine in general chat, or spams @everyone every time something goes wrong.

But on top of all that, I’m also the head of what we call the “Com” (or “ComCom”) team, short for Community and Communications. My role, simply put, is to bring new players into the game and make sure the ones already here are happy. Of course what that role entails has changed a lot since I first joined.

Early beginnings

Back then, Eterspire was a very different (and much smaller) game, and our community was just a small group of MMORPG enthusiasts. Our Discord server had around 300 members, and things were… quiet.

My very first discord message on the day I joined the team (no idea why they reacted with a tooth emoji)

The Short to Mid Term Future of Eterspire

I don’t know if that title is the best choice for this post, but honestly, I don’t know much about blogging. Hi, I’m Lartu! I’m the original creator of Eterspire, and these days I’m more or less the project’s director. I’ve sometimes used the title “Creative Director,” but the actual title on my business card is “Head of Strategy.” I’m in charge of making sure the game keeps growing, the company runs steadily, and that everyone working for us is as comfortable as possible.

In any case, welcome to the first entry of the Eterspire Developer Blog, a space where our team will share progress updates and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the world of Eterspire is built! We’ve started this blog because we want to give players a deeper insight into how we create Eterspire, the reasons behind the choices we make, and how things are going.

The Stonehollow Workshop Office