Warframe

About

Warframe is a co-op multiplayer third-person shooter video game published and developed by Canadian studio Digital Extremes. In the game, players control a member of the Tenno, a race of warriors who fight by controlling Warframes, advanced robot-like entities each with their own unique abilities, through various missions and quests throughout the Solar System.

History

Warframe originated from early concepts of Digital Extremes' previous game Dark Sector (also stylized as darkSector) ^[1], which was released on March 23, 2008. In an early trailer (shown below) released during E3 2005, many things featured in said trailer were ultimately removed in Dark Sector's final build, but would later be used in Warframe such as the design of the enemies (which would become the basis of the Grineer soldiers), and several weapons. Development of Warframe started around 2012 ^[2], taking unused concepts for Dark Sector along with content present in Dark Sector's final release (most notably the suits of armor worn by Dark Sector protagonist Hayden Tenno and Nadia Sudek, which would serve as the design basis of the warframes Excalibur and Nyx).

Top: The suits of armor worn by Hayden Tenno (left) and Nadia Sudek (right) as depicted in Dark Sector.
Bottom: Excalibur (left) and Nyx (right) as they appear in Warframe.

On August 9th, 2012, the official Warframe YouTube channel ^[3] uploaded an alpha teaser trailer of the game, and the game's closed beta period started on October 25 of the same year ^[4]. The game's closed beta period lasted until March 18, 2013, where the game was made free-to-play and opened to the public, coinciding with its release on Steam on March 26, 2013 ^[5]. Warframe would later be ported to the PlayStation 4 on November 15, 2013 ^[6], and the Xbox One on September 2, 2014 ^[7], each with its own promotional video released to commemorate the event.

Reception

Despite slightly mixed reviews on launch, many reviewers praised Warframe for its fluid gameplay and frequent free updates, but criticized the amount of grinding required to get to the game's more advanced areas. As of May 5th, 2016, Warframe is one of the most-played games on Steam, with a 91% "Very Positive" rating, and over 86,000+ positive reviews.

Online Relevance

On August 19th, 2016, Youtube user Mogamu uploaded a lore video (bottom right) explaining the origin story of Warfame titled "The Story of Warframe". The video has gained over 40 million views over the past few days since it's upload. On January 22nd, 2016, Youtube user, TotalBiscut uploaded a video (bottom left) giving an overview of the changes that have happened since he upload a first impression video on the game. The video has gained over 590 million over in less than a year since its upload.

|WARNING| Video on the bottom left contains spoilers to "The Second Dream" quest

[WIP]

Related Memes

Clem

Originating from a comic by Tumblr user Datareaper (below) ^[12], Clem is a Grineer soldier notable for his Hodor-like speech and his love for his custom twin Grakata submachine guns. The character proved popular enough in the community that Digital Extremes added Clem into the game as a minor ally with the quest A Man of Few Words ^[13], where the Corpus merchant Darvo sends the player to rescue him from a Grineer prison.

John Prodman

John Prodman is a community nickname given to Corpus Prod melee units, in reference to a story ^[14] told on the Warframe forums, where a player described their encounter with a Crewman NPC who fought the Infested boss Phorid with only his melee weapon and survived. Prodman's "legend" was eventually acknowledged by the developers themselves in a blog post on the official site ^[15].

Greedy Milk

Greedy Milk refers to a bizarre quote spoken by Grineer general Sargas Ruk in the Gravidus Dilemma event ^[16], where, in a message to players who sided with the Grineer during the event, Ruk threatened to "crush the greedy milk" from the skulls of the Corpus.

Booben

Booben is a joke name given to the Warframe Vauban, originating from a shitpost on the official Warframe forums titled "How is booben formed?" (a reference to the meme How is Babby formed?). In the thread, the user asked how to build Vauban, and was mocked by other users for his broken English and mis-spelling of Vauban as "Booben". The thread soon became extremely popular within the community, and players soon began using Booben as a nickname for the character.

External References