Yes, it’s 2025, but it’s not too late to start playing Warframe.
I know it’s intimidating. Starting any new online multiplayer game, much less one with 12 years of content to catch up on, is a daunting prospect. Warframe, the third-person multiplayer shooter, is known for its grind — but it also boasts jaw-dropping, absolutely bonkers story beats, and has one of the best multiplayer communities around. Also, it’s fun.
I’m here to tell you that not only is it possible to start playing Warframe in 2025, but developer Digital Extremes is also actively invested in making it easier — without sacrificing what makes Warframe so weird and good in the first place.
The game’s newest update, Isleweaver, is the latest step in that process.
Isleweaver includes a new chunk of story content that takes place in an area of the game that I have zero context for. It stars characters that I have not met. I am not worried. You should not worry about any of that either.
The expansion also streamlines Warframe’s early-game structure, so that newcomers won’t feel like they’re treading water waiting for the crazy stuff to happen. Polygon spoke with Warframe community live-ops manager Taylor King and community director Megan Everett about what exactly those changes entail.
“We’ve made a real focus on the critical path to [the 2024 expansion] 1999 and onwards,” says King. One way of accomplishing this is cutting down on the amount of nodes that players have to complete on each planet. Nodes are replayable missions and make up the bulk of early-game Warframe. Each planet has a series of nodes that players unlock one by one, creating a path leading to a junction that connects to the next planet. Gradually, the solar system opens up and the planets become a buffet of replayablity that nets you resources and experience.
Of course, in the years since Warframe was released, the number of missions has only swelled.
“And so the paths through the planets have also become more convoluted,” King said. “A lot of [the idea behind Isleweaver] was just like, ‘why does a new player need to play 10 nodes on Mars to be able to progress?’ [… ] It’s just being mindful of player time and investment that way, right?”
Nodes are not story-critical content. There are only so many mission types, and there’s redundancy across planets. New players will still have the same essential experience, but spend less time on the grind.
King and Everett say the team is conscious of the tension between players hearing about exciting new story chapters — like the buzzy 1999 expansion — and knowing they need to play a lot of game to get to the stuff that everyone is currently hype about.
“It’s a battle that we will fight for the rest of our lives as we continue to add things into the game,” says Everett.
Here’s the good news, from my perspective: I don’t have access to any of the latest story content (yet). And Warframe is still freaking fun.
I started playing in January 2025, alongside my boyfriend, who rapidly blasted on to late-game content and left me in the dust. I’m deeply conscious that there are plot developments awaiting me that I can’t even begin to understand. He is always traveling to locations I’m not allowed to see, to gather resources that I have never heard of, and participate in events that I am not allowed to know about. Sometimes I receive ominous texts that say things like, “We’re not even playing the same game anymore.”
I’m having a blast zipping around planets, unlocking new Warframes, the game’s weaponized armor sets, and grinding for resources. I spent ages underleveled, fishing and mining for ore to unlock a Warframe that I wanted, instead of playing story missions. (This is the Simone de Rochefort Way.) I have been extremely inefficient with the 130 hours that I’ve put into the game so far.
I am, perhaps, the problem that Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe, is trying to address.
“The focus is really to get players into the story and use that to lead them through the star chart, because otherwise — Warframe, you can kind of just faff around and do whatever you want,” says King. I sure can!
The team is also trying to be more thoughtful about how the game introduces and teaches new mechanics. In light of this, the junctions that gate each planet are getting a refresh.
“When we first introduced junctions a long time ago […] they were honestly just a way to connect planets,” says Everett. “They weren’t really valuable in the way we wanted them to be.”
Each junction requires players to complete a series of tasks, and then win a mini-boss battle to unlock the next planet. It’s a skill check — only now the tasks have been reworked to make sure players are learning the right game mechanics at the right time.
“There’s a lot of assumed knowledge in Warframe that you just kind of take advantage of,” says King. Before, a junction may have required that a player upgrade a mod, any mod. Now, the early-game Venus junction specifically asks players to equip and upgrade an Aura mod, which is critical for developing a more powerful build and engaging with the game’s deeper mechanics.
It might sound really obvious now, but this is all part and parcel of the game having grown organically over 12 years. The game throws a lot of mechanics at new players, and doesn’t exactly hold your hand and tell you what to do in each moment.
That’s generally a good thing. No one’s going to accuse Warframe of being overly simplistic or dumbed down. But the team now recognizes that the early game had to be rearranged to properly introduce the breadth of Warframe’s mechanics.
“We have to kind of experiment when it comes to new player stuff, to try and entice them somehow and teach them somehow where it’s appropriate,” says Everett.
Not every attempt to streamline the experience has been successful. In 2023, Digital Extremes released the Duviri Paradox expansion, and put it smack at the beginning of the game.
Image: Digital Extremes
“The issue we were trying to solve with Duviri is, if we’re going to put all this time and effort into this quest, this story, this world, how exciting would it be if a mid-level player just opens Warframe and they can play it right away?” said Everett. “We’re all hyped up about this new exciting thing and we want people to literally be able to play it day one, minute one that they log into the game.”
But players who started the game with Duviri bounced off. Duviri is a creative big swing, a sequence that is admittedly fantastic but deeply and completely weird. It’s still in the game, and technically the players can still access it long before they play any of the quests that will make Duviri make sense (and it makes perfect sense). But you still need to commit a good chunk of your time to Warframe before you can transition from your space-gun game to one that has flying horses. (Don’t worry about it!)
Isleweaver, then, is a more refined way of addressing the same problem: getting players in the door and onto the part that gets weird, but without sacrificing too much of the build-up that gets them attached to the world — and their Warframes.
One of the oft-asked questions I see on the Warframe subreddit comes from players wanting to know if the entire game is playable or if, as in Destiny 2, new players are locked out of major story missions. Importantly, none of the changes that Digital Extremes is making with Isleweaver impact the overarching story that the developer is trying to tell. The update doesn’t impact the narrative highs of Warframe – it just makes getting to those highs more efficient.
I’ve been pretty stunned at the community’s devotion to keeping Warframe’s weird narrative swings a secret. The community is generally welcomes new players in and helps them mechanically, while treating narrative surprises like nuclear codes.
Image: Digital Extremes
I have a healthy amount of nervousness over playing multiplayer games where my skill (or lack thereof) can impact other players. I have had my share of embarrassing moments in Warframe — like getting lost on a map when everyone else is at the extraction point. Or getting stuck in a hole, when everyone else is at the extraction point. None of that matters. The community is welcoming and helpful.
“I think our community has been phenomenal at teaching players what to do,” says King. “But a lot of these changes that we’re making are a reflection of what players are talking about — what they need to teach other Tenno.”
At this point in Warframe, I’m not the biggest beneficiary of Isleweaver’s changes. I won’t get to benefit from the streamlined early game, and it’ll be a minute before I can enjoy the latest story update. But I hope Isleweaver greases the wheels for new players looking at Warframe in 2025.
After all, it’s never too late to play a great game.
