Microsoft are running a new scale test for their upcoming release, which lands on Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass in March 2018.
The new Sea of Thieves beta will not be open to all, however, with Rare confirming that only those who are an Xbox Insider, or took part in the first beta, will be able to take part.
The scale test will begin on Friday, February 16th at 10am GMT (2am PST) and will end on Sunday, February 18th at 10am GMT (2am PST).
“The goal of this is to test a lot of the work we’ve done since the Closed Beta, and to try and hit a higher concurrent players number than we’ve ever seen before,” a message from Microsoft explains.
“With this added scale we expect – and plan – to see issues, that we can learn from and address.
“Not only are we looking to hit scale, we will also purposefully be stressing our services by throttling performance at certain times, testing the game in different data centers around the world, and simulating deliberate outages.”
Some examples of the issues Microsoft expect to see are:
- Sessions being interrupted
- An inability to join the game at certain times during the weekend
- Issues when using shops in-game
Microsoft say that they will be offering a similar feature set to the Closed Beta, which will be restricted to the Gold Hoarders trading company & accompanying Voyages.
“The purpose of this test is to drive scale and test issues at a high scale of player concurrency. We will not be seeking feedback on the game experience itself.”
Those who have preordered from the Microsoft / Xbox Store, The Sea of Thieves Closed Beta will appear in your ‘Library’ on the Microsoft Store if playing on PC and ‘My Games and Apps’ if playing on Xbox.
It should be noted that while the Sea of Thieves Closed Beta is effectively a trial run and progress won’t carry over into the full adventure launching on March 20th.
PC Founder installation as confirmed by Microsoft:
There are three stages from start to finish: Install the Insider Hub, find Sea of Thieves in the Hub and finally install the game from the Hub and Store. Follow the steps below:
- Press the Start key and open the Store
- Search for and install the Xbox Insider Hub
- Launch the Hub and you’ll find Sea of Thieves waiting for you
- Click the icon which will take you through to the Store page
- Click install and the download will begin.