Recently, Rare conducted a Sea of Thieves scale test to determine how servers responded during heavy player counts. While the first test was a success, there is still room for improvement and accommodating even more players.
Today, the developer announced that a second test would start on Friday February 23, 2018 at 7 AM EST and end on Sunday February 25 at 5 AM EST. The goal of this is to see how the latest multiplayer updates hold up and to hit a higher number of concurrent players than before. Gamers can participate in the scale test by downloading the beta build from the Microsoft Store and playing it over the weekend on Xbox One or Windows 10.
Sea of Thieves is an upcoming exploration-based pirate game from Rare. The developer is known for many famous franchises including Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and GoldenEye. However, in recent years, the team focused on developing Kinect games for Xbox One and Xbox 360. This was a curious decision, so when Phil Spencer became Head of Xbox in 2014, he assigned Rare a new project. Sea of Thieves is a shift for the developer and a concept the team hasn't tackled before.
The game has been delayed a few times but we finally have a concrete release date. As announced at The Game Awards 2017, Sea of Thieves is now scheduled to launch on March 20, 2018. The game will also support Xbox Play Anywhere and native 4K resolution on Xbox One X.
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