Rare has conducted multiple alpha and beta tests for their upcoming pirate adventure game
Sea of Thieves, but as we get closer to setting sail, the developer wants to ensure the servers will hold come launch next month. With that in mind, Rare is planning to run a few Scale Tests (stress tests) between now and launch on March 20, with the first of these planned to begin this Friday, February 16 at 10am GMT (2am PST) and end on Sunday, Febrary 18 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," explained Executive Producer Joe Neate.
Neate warns that with this added scale they expect to see issues that they 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," Neate said, warning of session interruptions, issues when using in-game shops, and the inability to join the game at certain times during the weekend.
As for who will be able to participate, this first scale test is open to Xbox Insiders and those who had access to the Closed Beta only. The content and features in this beta will be similar to those that we saw with the recent Closed Beta - restricted to the Gold Hoarders trading company and 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," Neate said.
"We do plan on running another beta closer to the launch of the game, where players will get a taste of the wider Sea of Thieves experience, but for now our focus is on our scale testing plans."
Rare didn't say if the future beta will be expanded to allow more players, but it would make sense to given that they are stress testing the servers.
Sea of Thieves launches for Xbox One and PC on March 20.