No pay-to-win. Not a slogan. A constraint.

The five vows

1. 01

   No paid heroes.

   Every hero, captain, builder, hunter, soldier — every named member of your House — is recruited, trained, or unlocked through play. You cannot buy a 5-star general. You cannot summon legendary units from a chest. You cannot pay to skip recruitment. The roster you fight with is the roster you earned.

2. 02

   No timer skips.

   Building a Keep takes the time it takes. Crafting takes the time it takes. Travel takes the time it takes. There is no item, no currency, and no subscription tier that shortens any timer. If a 6-hour build feels too long, we shorten it for everyone. Money never bends time in Stand Eternal.

3. 03

   No purchasable resources.

   Wood, stone, food, iron, gold — every resource enters the economy through play, by hand or by worker. You cannot buy a chest of stone. You cannot trade real money for in-game gold. You cannot subscribe to a 'starter pack' that drops resources into your storage. The only path to a stocked Keep is the road and the axe.

4. 04

   No paid combat advantage.

   No paid weapon is stronger than the strongest crafted weapon. No paid armour reduces damage further. No subscription tier increases stat caps, training speed, or hero levels. Veterans win with knowledge, alliance, and timing — not with a wallet.

5. 05

   No exclusive paid cosmetics.

   Cosmetic items exist — banners, sigils, badges, titles, monument sigils, Hall of Fame entries. They are awarded for in-world deeds: top Influence rankings, Faction War overlays, Wonder completions, Crown of the Worthy. You cannot buy a cosmetic. The visual flex of a veteran is unforgeable.

Why this is structural, not stylistic

The mobile MMO category is dominated by a small number of titles generating cumulative revenue most studios cannot imagine: Rise of Kingdoms at over US $3.5 billion, Whiteout Survival at over US $3 billion, Last War: Survival at over US $2 billion. Every one of those numbers is built on the same engine — a small fraction of players (whales) pay tens of thousands of dollars each to maintain competitive parity, while the rest play for free as crowd content.

Those games could not become Stand Eternal even if their studios wanted them to. Migrating an existing whale-funded MMO to a fair-monetization model is brand cannibalisation: the players paying $10,000 for a hero would refund instantly the day a non-paying player could obtain the same hero. The whales are not customers — they are the product, and the product cannot be redesigned mid-flight.

This is why the gap exists, and why it has stayed open. The position fair MMO with the depth and 24/7 meta of Rise of Kingdoms is not occupied not because nobody wants it, but because every player large enough to fill it is structurally locked out of trying.

The receipts — what we are not

Below are the games we are most often compared to and the line each one crosses that Stand Eternal will not.

The historical proof — fair MMOs survive longer

Pay-to-win games can earn enormous sums in the short and medium term. They almost never sustain. Subscription-based MMOs, by contrast, are the only category in the genre with a track record of decades-long stability:

• Final Fantasy XIV

  Subscription only. Roughly US$ 700M+ per year as of 2024. Player count grew during World of Warcraft’s decline. Cosmetic sales exist but are decorative — never give power.

• World of Warcraft

  Twenty years old. Approximately US$ 1.5B per year at peak. Subscription model has outlasted dozens of free-to-play challengers built on its template.

• Old School RuneScape

  Twenty-three years old. Approximately 200,000 active subscribers. The community itself voted ‘no’ to in-game purchasable bonds-as-power features — and developers honoured the vote.

• EVE Online

  Twenty-two years old. Approximately 200,000 active subscribers. The most player-driven economy and politics in the genre. Mostly subscription with optional skill injectors that never confer combat advantage outright.

The pattern is consistent. Fair monetization shrinks the addressable market — a free-to-play conditioned mobile audience will not pay a subscription — but the audience that does pay stays for years, generates lower customer-acquisition cost, and produces a community worth playing inside. We are deliberately choosing the smaller, higher-quality audience.

The Founder Pack — full disclosure

During the launch year, players who want to support development beyond the subscription will be able to purchase a one-time Founder Pack at a regionally-priced amount (final number announced before launch). It includes lifetime subscription and a cosmetic-only badge, banner, and title marking the bearer as a First Founder.

The pack confers no in-game advantage of any kind: no hero, no resource, no skill, no combat stat, no timer, no slot, no faster training, no higher cap, no exclusive content. A Founder Pack subscriber and a regular monthly subscriber play the same game and see the same world. The pack is sold for one year only and is retired permanently when the launch year ends — never re-issued.

We disclose this because the only honest version of an anti-P2W pledge is one that names every paid item that exists.

If a vow ever breaks

The five vows above are tracked publicly in our open architectural decision record (ADR 0021). They are the constraints we measure every new feature against. If a future feature is ever proposed that violates one of them, the proposal is rejected — not the vow. If we ever break one, you will know, and we will lose you. We’re building this game expecting the audience that holds us to it.