Techrot Encore Interview With Megan Everett

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home March 14, 2025 35 Views 10 Min Read
Techrot Encore Interview With Megan Everett



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Over the years, the Warframe Community team has always communicated straightforwardly and transparently, which has earned it well-deserved praise from the player base.

With the Devstreams, Prime Time streams, and many other activities over the past decade, this team is a core part of Warframe’s development. I recently sat down with Megan Everett, the game’s community director, to chat about the reception to the Techrot Encore update and what comes next for Warframe.

A Collage image of Pablo Alonso and Warframe.

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Building A Long-Term Relationship

Excalibur riding an atomicycle in Warframe.

“I think we can easily and confidently say that the team, since day one, has been a guiding force for how we want to be transparent with our players and establish what the relationship is with our players,” Everett explains. “Back in 2012, when we were just trying to survive and put Warframe out, we saw that the community and the players from the founders program were the ones that were saving us and keeping our lights on. So we knew how important they were to us, and we wanted them to feel just as important.”

Everett says the crucial thing is to “ensure that the things we’re creating still have that community mindset”, and that means a lot of communication going both ways. “We have been very transparent with our community for years, and we don’t shy away or hide from even the stuff that we know might not go over well,” she says. “We’re really lucky and very consistent with maintaining that relationship 12 years later, and I hope that players continue to see us as the human beings we are and that we’re in this together to make this game what we all wanna play, hopefully for another 12 years.”

The Importance Of Having A Conversation

The Warframe Temple playing the guitar in Warframe.

The teased Technocyte Coda enemies were initially intended to be released with the 1999 update, but it needed a short delay and is being released in Techrot Encore instead. Thankfully, the Warframe community has been understanding and supportive, which is not often seen in the industry in cases like this.

“It goes back to the relationship that we built; last year, we had to decide to pull out that content, and we had been championing that mechanic for a while, so we knew it was going to be a big deal when we announced it,” Everett explains. “But it was our job to make sure that we communicated that properly because we wanted to give players the 1999 update in its best possible shape, and we couldn’t have done it if we had people still working on the Technocyte Coda.

“Luckily, the community was very understanding, and I think that also lends itself to the fact that we made sure that they knew that there was so much coming in this update. Yes, we were pulling that out, but players were going to get it eventually, and thanks to the extra months we had, it’s already a better system than it would have ever been if we launched it with 1999.”

Luckily, the community understood and respected that, and thus, Techrot Encore is coming soon. However, this update is seemingly bigger than usual. So, did any piece of player feedback in particular resonate with the team after the release of 1999?

“It is the biggest Echoes update that we’ve ever done, to the point where we had to give it its own name and a two-part dev stream, which we’ve never done before for an update of that kind,” Everett explains. “We were very locked in on the feedback from 1999; we knew that the KIM system did better than we could have hoped for, and we had people engaging in that relationship system that I never thought would be interested.

“If we could push that even further with the new Protoframes, even though they’re not romanceable, then we wanted to go that route while still trying to give you that same experience,” she adds. “And that’s the route we took, making sure that it’s done well enough that you care almost as much or even more about these new characters.”

New Relationships, But Not Quite

The Protoframes Flare, Kaya, Minerva y Velimir alongside Temple in Warframe.

Techrot Encore introduces Minerva, Flare, Kaya, and Velimir, expanding the Protoframe cast to ten characters; however, there are 50 other Warframes that are yet to be seen in Protoframe form. Which ones could be good candidates?

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say I would love a Valkyr Protoframe because that’s my girl,” she explains. “But it just comes down to my favorite Warframes; if there was a Valkyr and a Dante Warframe, I could just sleep peacefully at night because those are my favorites.

“The ones that are coming out with Techro Encore have been planned out since March of last year, and we knew the vibe we wanted to take, and the reaction that we got from 1999 for Proto Frames fueled us to like go ham on them,” she adds. ”But it has to fit the story that we know we’re going; it’s incorrect to say that every update will have a Protoframe, and we don’t want to set that expectation. But if there’s another place along the way that makes sense for a Protoframe, then there will be a consideration.”

With the addition of four new Protoframes, it was confirmed that that Saryn is not Major Rusalka, but instead, her adoptive mother Minerva, putting an end to a major fan theory that existed before the release of 1999. This poses the following question: Is Major Rusalka related to any existing Warframe at all?

“I don’t have an answer for that that I’m confident to say; I know where the story is going with that, and obviously what players will experience in TechRot,” she explains. “If I say no and something happens, I’m gonna feel real bad, but if you love Rusalka, then you’re gonna enjoy Techrot Encore because you’re gonna learn a lot.”

After such a massive release, and with an equally big update coming very soon, is there any element of 1999 that’s yet to be improved?

“I would love more online boyband songs; I know that’s not meta content or anything, but I loved what we did with that, and the players loved it,” she explains. “To this day, all those songs are on my Spotify gym playlist, and it just is so wildly abstract from Warframe, but it still makes sense, and it brings me so much joy.

“The only other thing off the top of my head is that we’re adding many more tilesets to 1999 and having a lot more fun with how we can play around with those tiles,” she adds. “The whole point of this update was to just be weird, have the ‘90s vibes, and make it feel Warframe, expanding how 1999 feels.”

With the next chapter just around the corner, players are excited to finally meet the new Protoframes, try the new Warframe Temple, fight against the infested Technocyte Coda boyband, and finally find out what happened to Major Rusalka in Warframe: Techrot Encore.

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