Warframe — Wake up, Tenno

SIGSTART · July 7, 2019, 8:06am

Welcome to M.E.W.T.: the Most Epic Warframe Topic.

Warframe is a game developed by Digital Extremes. Their name might not be immediately familiar to you, but when you start reading the list of games the studio made or was involved in, they are instantly recognisable.

Warframe’s history is rooted in nail-biting times for Digital Extremes. In 2012, the company completed at least two rounds of significant lay-offs as it started running out of money. It desperately tried to get publishers to buy Warframe, but no-one would buy into the idea of a regularly updated, online multiplayer co-op third-person action game.

Stated differently: not that long ago, publishers weren’t interested in “live service” games unless they were MMORPGs. Nowadays it’s all they want to make.

Even free-to-play publishers apparently said the game looked too good to succeed (they didn’t believe Digital Extremes could update it frequently enough to encourage players to spend money on it).

Ultimately, Digital Extremes decided to self-publish the game, and after years of growth and building momentum, it is the juggernaut it is today (it camps in the top 10 most-played games on Steam).

NoClip’s documentary on Warframe has the founder and staff tell the story of how the game came to be:

Digital Extremes is based in Canada, and used to be entirely independent until 2014, when it sold 61% of the company for $73 million to a Chinese holding company called Leyou (it was called Multi Dynamic at the time).

The sale clearly hasn’t impacted development of Warframe, and Digital Extremes has even dabbled in co-developing and publishing other games since then. However, these projects have mostly been cancelled (The Amazing Eternals, and Human Head’s Survived By) or not well received critically (Sword Coast Legends).

Here’s a snapshot of the games Digital Extremes made before it ultimately launched Warframe as a last-ditch effort to save the studio. See if you spot a trend :

Solar Winds (1993, publisher: Epic MegaGames)
Epic Pinball (1993, publisher: Epic MegaGames)
Unreal (1998, co-developed with Epic MegaGames and Legend Entertainment)
Unreal Tournament (1999, co-developed with Epic Games)
Unreal Championship (2002, co-developed with Epic Games)
Unreal Tournament 2002 (co-developed with Epic Games)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (co-developed with Epic Games)

Other games Digital Extremes worked on include the PS3 port of BioShock, multiplayer for BioShock 2, multiplayer for Homefront, and The Darkness II.

It also worked on a game called Dark Sector, which is talked about as the game that was going to be Warframe until publishers asked Digital Extremes to make significant changes to ts vision.

SIGSTART · July 7, 2019, 8:12am

TennCon 2019 has come and gone, so I thought it’s high time we get an official Warframe topic. I plan to be posting a few articles, so it might be better to bring the discussions together in one place rather than in all the separate article topics that are about to be created.

Here are the trailers from this morning (the keynote was at midnight, 2019-07-06T22:00:00Z).

SPOILERS (at the end, around the 39:40 mark)

SPOILERS: The Duviri Paradox

SIGSTART · July 7, 2019, 10:23am

I’ll post links to the topics of all the articles I do from TennoCon 2019 here:

1nF4m0u5 · July 7, 2019, 12:00pm

I’m up for any and all sessions of Warframe so just pop me a message and if I’m home I’ll join

Wlad · July 7, 2019, 12:06pm

I need to update mine again sometime…

Wyvern · July 7, 2019, 7:57pm

The only question I have is with the new engine - how sick will it make me?

SIGSTART · July 7, 2019, 7:58pm

Or… Maybe it will fix the issues you’ve been having?

Deadlypinecone · July 8, 2019, 5:07am

After reading all these articles I should probably give Warframe another go. Hopefully the technical issue that prevented me from playing before is gone.

1nF4m0u5 · July 8, 2019, 6:02am

What was that?

Deadlypinecone · July 8, 2019, 6:08am

At some point while playing, my screen would freeze but I could hear the game sounds carrying on in the background.

I did a whole lot of googling and troubleshooting at the time, but I think it was related to a RAM issue I was having and seem to have resolved. I haven’t tried playing since to confirm if that was it though.

1nF4m0u5 · July 8, 2019, 6:09am

You should try it again dude. Just beware that this game sucks you in plus if you need any help I’ll be happy to help

1nF4m0u5 · July 8, 2019, 6:12am

@SIGSTART have you played Dark Sector yet?

Wyvern · July 8, 2019, 6:58am

The bigger question will be - how much is left in my account

SIGSTART · July 8, 2019, 7:26am

We’ve completely plundered you. If the engine update fixes Warframe’s motion sickness issue, I’m afraid we’ll have to play together for many hours to farm back all the stuff we took

SIGSTART · July 8, 2019, 7:28am

I’ve only watched brief snippets of gameplay. Is it worth it? It such an old game, I figured my time would be better spent on MOAR WARFRAME

Wlad · July 8, 2019, 7:31am

Lies! This is what you always say but I think we’ve played Warframe like twice over the years we’ve known each other

Jokes aside, I really should update mine and play again. Knowing the game when I log in I will get either 50% or 75% off plat and it will kill me that I won’t be able to buy any. That’s how I got most of my frames: don’t play for a while, log in again and buy plat on the cheap and then buy 3 frames at once.

1nF4m0u5 · July 8, 2019, 7:32am

If you check the proto skin. That’s what you play in game. Aswell the play the character Heiden Tenno also DE said it takes place in the same universe. The glave is also a weapon from the game.

I’d say get it just to play it. It’s really fun

1nF4m0u5 · July 8, 2019, 7:33am

Cause 90% of the time we play something that doesn’t need an update

Wlad · July 8, 2019, 7:36am

Dark Sector is definitely worth playing. Still one of my favourite third-person action games. It’s a little like a mix between Gears of War and Resident Evil. It’s just not an easy game to find, I’m 90% certain you can’t find it on steam and IIRC the PC version had a nasty bug that would make you entire screen flash red at a specific place in the game.

EDIT: Well, well. Look what the evil G2A has (and neither Steam or CDKeys have it):

https://www.g2a.com/dark-sector-steam-gift-global-i10000043375001

@1nF4m0u5 I know, hence the

czc · July 8, 2019, 7:38am

I downloaded Warframe once and ran down a corridor but was so lost as to what I should do that I closed the game and uninstalled it. That folks, was my brief experience with Warframe.