Warframe 1999 is locked behind hundreds of hours of content, but there might be a fix

Warframe 1999 looks sick; there, I said it. From the moment I caught the teaser back at Tennocon last year, I’ve been desperate to find out more; watching and waiting, listening to ’90s throwbacks in anticipation. While I initially thought 1999 was its own separate entity, akin to The Duviri Paradox or a World of Warcraft expansion, it is, instead, an in-game questline that lies beyond the events of Whispers in the Walls. As a newer player who’s barely touched down on Fortuna, it’s a long road to get to Höllvania Central Mall, so I ask creative director Rebecca Ford and community director Megan Everett how they’re planning to combat the grind for new players.

Because let’s be real; Warframe is confusing. When I tried it out last year ahead of Tennocon 2023, I immediately found myself immersed in complex systems and baffling nomenclature; a look at the star map made me want to cry – so many quests, but where to go? As a returning player I’ve got by with the help of some of my newfound Tennocon friends, but even then, Warframe feels like a behemoth I’m going to struggle to conquer.

Warframe 1999 falls after Whispers in the Walls, the multiplayer game‘s latest big update, meaning there are hundreds of hours of content to play through. Sure, 1999 looks amazing, but are new players willing to put in that much grind? I ask Ford and Everett at Tennocon, sitting inside a recreation of one of the game’s abandoned subways. “It does worry me,” Ford says, nodding intensely. “But…”

“It’s a conversation we have every year,” continues Everett; it’s almost like they’ve read each other’s thoughts (they probably have). “We’re going on 11 years of Warframe and as we add to it – we’re never going to be stagnant – that’s a conversation we keep coming back to.

“It’s very important to us [that players] experience the story, because the storytelling is such an important part of Warframe. We tried putting [The] Duviri [Paradox] at the beginning of the game last year and it didn’t really work out for us, so we’ve learned lessons from that, and we have plans in place to get players to experience 1999 a little bit before it comes out.”

“The other version of this is that you get to play an entire campaign before entering 1999,” Ford notes. “We’d say ‘yeah, you’ve got to suffer through it, but also, oh, you get to enjoy it! It really depends on how much patience people have these days, which for us is the biggest risk.”

I follow on from Everett’s point about Duviri, asking if Digital Extremes would consider a different iteration of placing new questlines at the start of the game, versus how Duviri was implemented.

“We want to try something,” Ford tells me. “But it’s going to be a risk and we don’t know how far we want to go. We do have an active, open thread on ‘can we do just this one thing for new players?’ and the answer might be yes, but I can’t say any more at this time.” You heard it here first, folks, DE is cooking.

As someone who’s only really seriously attempted to get to grips with Warframe recently, I can say that there’s something about it that’s luring me back in. I want to find out more about the omnipresent Lotus and her ambitions, and explore the vast expanse of The Vallis. Plus, there’s the 1999 Höllvania Central Mall event, too, which has given me a glimpse into the future that I’m grinding for – and I like it.

Digital Extremes has confirmed that the Warframe 1999 release window is set for winter, 2024 – it takes place at the turn of millennium, after all. In order to prepare, we have a list of all the currently active Warframe codes, so that you can redeem various new Glyphs and goodies.

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