The vast majority of us were recruited to this game for the same reason: to defend, liberate and possibly bring back our countries from foreign conquest.
That was the case for me, and for many of the people currently playing in Yemen.
I was told that Sweden needed me.
Sweden had been conquered by the Dutch. My patriotic heart heeded the call and soon I was building companies, donating what little I had and joining battles even at a low level.
There was a clear objective.
Liberate Sweden.
And a few weeks after joining, we actually did it.
Sweden was free.
It was an amazing feeling. Hundreds of us had been recruited in a very short time, many barely understanding the game when we joined. Somehow, together, we had done exactly what we were recruited to do.
I had helped take our country back.
Then came the question:
What now?
It didn't take long before Sweden was conquered again.
So we fought. A few weeks later, we took it back.
Then we lost it again.
Another revolt. Another liberation. Another invasion. Another period of rebuilding.
And somewhere in that cycle, what had initially felt exciting started feeling both frustrating and strangely pointless.
Is this it?
Go eco. Rebuild our wealth. Wait.
Someone invades.
Everyone gets pinged. Orders are set. We dump everything into the battle.
Victory! Sweden is liberated!
Then back to eco.
Maybe next time we invade the Netherlands first. Maybe Denmark. Maybe Belgium. We occupy them, deal with their revolts, they take it back, someone enters Sweden again.
And the whole thing starts over.
Eventually you ask yourself:
What exactly am I waiting for?
What is the purpose of playing a game once a month, repeating the same cycle?
There is nothing wrong with patriotism.
It is probably one of WarEra's strongest recruitment tools. Tell somebody their real country has been conquered and fifteen minutes later they're opening companies and asking where to shoot the Dutch.
It worked on me.
But patriotism can be the reason you join WarEra without becoming the only reason you play WarEra.
Because eventually you discover the rest of the game.
Politics. Diplomacy. Alliances. Operations. Economy with an actual purpose. Negotiating with somebody you were shooting yesterday.
Sometimes you spend hours planning an operation.
Sometimes you open Discord and Benyah had written:
"Oops, I started a battle."
Panic mixed with laughter. Usually mostly laughter. Never any hard feelings. Nobody is upset.
Someone is calculating damage. Someone is asking what the fuck happened, jokingly obviously! Someone else is already negotiating with three countries.
Was it intentional?
Who cares anymore.
We're having fun.
Somebody had an unnecessary, strategically questionable idea and twenty minutes later half the country is involved.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it's a catastrophe.
For three hours, some completely irrelevant region becomes the most important place in WarEra.
That is the game.
And once you see the game that way, another question appears:
Why should you inherit somebody else's enemies?
"They betrayed us."
"We've always fought them."
"We can never work with them."
Okay.
Were you even playing when it happened?
Governments change. Players quit. Alliances disappear. Half the people involved in the original conflict may already be gone.
Yet new players still arrive and inherit the hatred.
"Welcome to WarEra. Here are your missions, here is our Discord, and by the way, you hate these people."
Why?
"History."
How long?
"Forever."
Is the purpose of WarEra for Swedish players to fight Denmark and the Netherlands until the servers shut down?
Can Arabs fight Arabs?
Can yesterday's enemy become tomorrow's ally?
If every friendship and rivalry is predetermined by old conflicts, what is the point of having politics at all?
Clock in.
Do your eco.
Wait for orders.
Shoot the designated enemy.
Clock out.
Repeat next month.
Yemen is different.
Not because Yemen is inherently better.
Not because of the flag.
Not because we expect you to become a Yemeni patriot.
Yemen is the way we have chosen to play.
We don't need to own our land for our identity to survive.
If we have valuable production, we'll defend it.
If a region matters strategically, we'll fight for it.
But if tomorrow Yemen becomes landless?
Fine.
Our egos aren't destroyed.
We still fight.
We still plot.
We still negotiate.
We still make political decisions.
We still join wars around the map.
The game continues.
Land is useful.
Production is useful.
But they're tools.
We can ask:
Is this worth fighting for? Will this be fun? Does this actually benefit us?
Economy is the fuel, it isn't the destination. Our cores mean nothing unless they provide us value. We don't fight for the sake of them if they don't directly benefit us.
If we're not fighting, we're planning.
If we're not planning, we're negotiating.
If we're not negotiating, somebody is proposing something questionable.
And if nothing is happening, give it a few hours.
Someone will fix that.
And even when we're doing absolutely nothing, morning or night, debuffed and useless, we're usually laughing in Discord anyway.
Politics works the same way.
There aren't secret government channels where five people decide what Yemen thinks and everyone else receives the announcement later.
We're all the government.
Our government discussions are open.
Our Discord embassies are open to Yemen players.
You can watch the diplomacy happen. Join the discussion. Disagree. Send your opinion. Send a meme to an ally—or an enemy.
Or say nothing at all.
The point is that you have the choice.
What is the point of playing a political game if almost nobody gets to see the politics?
A country should feel like something you participate in.
Not something you subscribe to.
And Yemen's diplomacy changes because the game changes.
At one point Yemen had peace with Egypt and Iraq.
Later we fought Iraq and then Egypt.
We fought alongside BEER.
We created FORGE as a new beginning. The idea was simple—if we could make any alliance we wanted, based on the strongest countries, not based on who is "supposed" to be our ally, not based on who used to be an old enemy, who would be part of it?
It took time for some allied countries to understand it. Some still don't, and disagree with how FORGE operates and which countries are included in the alliance.
Why did we invite France to FORGE? Aren't they our enemy?
Today we have peace with Egypt and COPE. The latter also questioned why we invited France. Their enemy. They didn't like it, and it shook our peace agreement for a moment. For some, it's hard to think outside of old feuds. Not for Yemen.
Tomorrow?
Who knows.
That's fine.
There are no eternal enemies.
Having fought somebody doesn't mean you need to hate them forever.
Having been allied with somebody doesn't mean you owe them permanent loyalty.
Yesterday's enemy can become tomorrow's friend.
Today's friend can be tomorrow's opponent.
That doesn't automatically mean betrayal.
Players change.
Governments change.
Interests change.
The map changes.
Why shouldn't diplomacy?
This isn't real life.
Nobody actually died in Uppland.
Nobody's grandfather was killed in the Great Battle of Denmark.
You don't have a generational blood feud with a Dutch player because he clicked attack against Sweden six months ago.
We can desperately try to destroy each other for an evening and laugh about it afterward.
We can hate-love our enemies.
That's part of the fun.
The moment every alliance becomes permanent and every enemy becomes eternal, politics stops moving.
And politics without movement is boring.
I still love Sweden.
Moving somewhere else in WarEra didn't suddenly make me less Swedish.
I answered the call. I helped. We liberated Sweden.
I remember how good that felt.
But eventually I realized I hadn't spent months building my account just to repeat the same chapter forever.
I wanted to see the rest of the game.
And I suspect there are players all across WarEra who feel the same way.
Players who log in, collect production, do missions, check for an important battle and log out.
Players waiting for something. Waiting for an important battle. Something meaningful.
Players being told to remain angry about conflicts they weren't even present for.
Players whose experience is being dictated by history rather than by themselves.
So ask yourself:
Are you still playing the game you want to play?
Not the game your first president wanted.
Not the game your recruiter wanted.
Not the game somebody decided your country should play six months ago.
The game YOU want to play.
You are not being invited to exchange Swedish, Dutch, Danish, German, Arab or any other patriotism for Yemeni patriotism.
That completely misses the point.
We're inviting you to stop treating the country as the game.
The country is the tool.
The players are the game.
The community.
The diplomacy.
The plotting.
The battles.
The stupid ideas.
The unexpected alliances.
The grudges that become friendships.
The plans that somehow work.
And the plans that absolutely do not.
WarEra is the game.
And Yemen intends to actually play it.
If you're tired of waiting for history to tell you who your enemy is;
if you're tired of logging in only to be eco;
if you want to participate instead of observe;
if losing a colored piece of the map doesn't destroy your reason for playing;
if you can fight somebody today without needing to hate them tomorrow;
if waking up to "oops, I started a battle" sounds better than another month of waiting;
then you'll probably understand Yemen.
You don't have to forget where you came from.
We didn't.
Just stop allowing the past to decide everything you do next.
The invitation is open.
Come play the game with us.
Feel free to contact anyone in Yemen if you want to know more.
Join Yemen.