A Message from Our Creative Director Björn!
An update on our content next year!
Hey, StarFam!
My name is Björn (aka GM Bear), and I recently took on the role of Creative Director for Star Stable Online. I worked as Art Director for 2 years, but I wanted to officially introduce myself and share more about where we plan to take the game next.
If you’ve played through Marchenghast or the latest main story quest, then you’re already familiar with my creative direction work, as I filled that role for those projects. It was immensely satisfying, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we did. In my free time, I live on a farm with my family (we have horses, cats, chickens, and rabbits), and I enjoy oil painting and playing all sorts of games.
When it comes to the future plans of SSO, we feel it’s important to go back to our roots. That immersive world you fell in love with, filled with mystery and magic, riding beautiful horses with friends - that is our foundation. Jorvik’s stories weave directly into that foundation, yet several narrative threads have been left hanging. Starting next year, we aim to focus more on our stories (including one very large purple spiral) and ensure we release more quest content regularly. Not every release will be massive, but they will be meaningful.
We will have fewer time-limited events, with less stress to play every single day. Of course, we want players to play the game, but because they want to, not because they feel pressured to. You should be able to play how you want, whether you are a solo player enjoying the game once in a while, or a hardcore grinder with a million light stacked in your wardrobe.
That said, we'll have fewer festivals next year, and we won't focus on adding as much new content to them. We know that players enjoy these events, so we don’t want to remove them, but we do need to create space for our team to work on quests and improvements too. We feel this is a fair trade-off for now and is not intended to be a forever solution.
Style Riders Show will return quarterly based on your feedback on frequency, and we’d also like to iterate on the feature to improve the experience (add new poses, adjust how the voting is set up, etc.). Many of you have also shown interest in the new Show Jumping, so we’ll release additional courses to you as well.
Horses, of course, are the heart of our game. Next year we’re moving to a new breed every quarter, plus two magical horse releases and new coat variations along the way. Releasing fewer horses means each one still gets the care it deserves, and it frees up time for the next generation of horse technology. We’ll share more about what we’re planning for Generation 4 before the end of the year.
And before this article gets too long, I also wanted to touch on a few things already in the works. Character name change is planned to be released this November, and the team is deep within the realm of the Map and Quest Log. We will follow up before the end of the year with some more insights into how that project is coming along (yes, being able to zoom on the map was top of the list).
I want you to come away from this article knowing that things will be changing (for the better, I believe) and you are a critical part of that change. I encourage you to engage with us, and in the times I have chatted with you on various servers, I've seen so much genuine excitement, passion, and love for Star Stable. Keep bringing the feedback! This isn't an exhaustive list of everything we are planning, but it's the opening page of a new story we’ll write together.
