Warframe: Older Game Becoming Popular Again?
This is a photo of some of the warframes available to obtain in the game (Photo: Digital Extremes & Panic Button Games).
Warframe - despite being made in spring of 2013, is slowly making a comeback. By the end of November of 2022, Warframe reached a peak of over 58,000 active players/subscribers. That may seem like a lot of people but that’s a big decline considering it’s older percentage of about 154,000 active players almost 3 years ago in August of 2020. Overall, Warframe has about 32 million total players and subscribers. This isn’t as big of a player base compared to other RPG shooter games like Borderland 2, Fallout 3, and Destiny 2. Although it isn’t as popular compared to other RPG shooters, it’s still quite a fun game. I like to think some of the best games are the less popular ones.
Warframe offers tons of content for players to explore. Many people find the amount of content overwhelming and confusing, which I can admit it is. But, it gives you many different things to do and try out when you’re bored. The game is free to play… but you do have the option to spend money and kind of cheat your way through the game. The game does stop you from buying certain things like weapons, to stop you from having more overpowered weapons early on in the game. You have to be mastery rank (which is basically levels) 8 in order to buy certain things within the game. I personally think it’s more worth it to play through the game than waste your money (It’s incredibly overpriced). The game itself is based on grinding and spending tons of time and attention towards it. So, getting warframes is definitely not easy and takes a lot of time and patience.
One of my favorite things about this game is the characters you can unlock, build, and customize over time. You gain warframe fragments/blueprints as you progress and complete more important missions. There are about 71 warframes within the game right now that you can obtain. I find the warframe designs quite pretty and they’re incredibly detailed. You can get all these cool add-ons for your warframes like capes, armors, more helmet designs, and tons more cosmetics. You can also change the color of your warframe as many times you want, but you do usually have to pay for more access to more color options. Certain warframes come with their own weapons too. But, you also have to grind for those. You can equip three weapons: primary, secondary, and a melee. There are many cool weapons that you can get in the game.
As for what Warframe is, it’s a third-person looter shooter. There really isn’t a clear story you’re following throughout the game. It’s quite confusing to follow and it jumps around quite a bit… especially when events come into play. For basic terms, you’re basically doing quests while unlocking more planets and trying to obtain cool warframes (characters) with special abilities and their weapons. They’re are quite a few planets you get to unlock and even more quests you have to do on the planets. As events show up, there will be more quests and/or planets that can allow you to obtain a certain warframe’s blueprints or a weapon's blue prints.This game is also multiplayer so you can play it with your friends.
Overall, I love Warframe. Yes, it’s confusing and there is a lot for you to do/learn, but I think it’s worth giving a shot at playing. That is if you’re patient enough. Although it may be confusing, the scenery/graphics are really cool and the warframes are the best part. As the years progressed, the game got less and less popular and more underground. But, as of late last year, there was a spike in players so we might see it grow more popularity.