Sea of Thieves to hold scale testing this weekend

We're a little over a month out from Sea of Thieves' March 20 launch on Xbox One and Windows 10, and the development team at Rare is gearing up for some final testing. Things will kick off this weekend, when Rare has announced it will hold a scale test designed to stress its services and pinpoint any issues that crop up.

The test is due to begin on February 16 at 10 a.m. GMT (2 a.m. PST) and run through February 18 at 10 a.m GMT (2 a.m. PST). The goal of the test, Rare says, is to try to hit a higher number of concurrent players than it has before and test some of the optimizations it has implemented in response to January's beta test. For those who want to take part, this test will be open to Xbox Insiders who had access to the previous closed beta test, Rare says.

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As for content, Rare says that this test will include a similar set of features to the recent closed beta. That means the test will be restricted to the Gold Hoarders trading company and voyages. The team stresses that it isn't seeking any feedback on the game experience with these tests, instead focusing on testing "issues at a high scale of player concurrency." As such, expect to run into issues with joining games, sessions being interrupted, and using the in-game shops.

This is the first of a couple of scale tests Rare says it is planning between now and launch. The team also confirmed that it is planning to do another beta test closer to the launch of the game, in which players will get to check out more of the full Sea of Thieves experience.

Sea of Thieves is expected to launch on March 20, 2018, for Xbox One and Windows 10 as part of Xbox Play Anywhere for $59.99. The game will also be available as part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass for $9.99 per month.

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