Another Sea of Thieves scale test is going on this weekend to test the game’s servers with high numbers of concurrent players. If you’re an Xbox Insider, you can access the Sea of Thieves stress test via the Insider Hub, or if you were already in the Closed Beta, you can just jump right back in.
The second Sea of Thieves scale test will be mostly the same as the first one. The test will focus on testing the game at numerous data centers around the globe and stressing the servers in multiple ways. Not only will Rare be trying to hit full scale on the Sea of Thieves servers they have running, but they also will be throttling performance to test server hand-off and simulating outages to ensure they have enough redundancy to keep the game going.
Be warned; when playing the Sea of Thieves Closed Beta you’ll likely encounter issues as a result of Rare’s server testing. Rare expects there to be problems with sessions being interrupted, shops may be unusable at times, and you may be unable to join a server sporadically. Even though this is a bit of a headache for people who just want to play the game, remember that these kinds of tests are vital if you wish Sea of Thieves to be functioning the best it can be on launch.
You’ll experience similar gameplay in this Closed Beta as you did in the last one. The only quest givers will be the Gold Hoarders trading company, and there will be a limited amount of items and costumes available to use. However, Rare has announced that closer to the full launch of Sea of Thieves there will be another beta that will allow players to experience a fuller set of the game’s features. Whether or not this will be an open or closed beta hasn’t been announced yet.
This weekend’s Sea of Thieves stress test closed beta runs from now until Sunday, February 25 at 5 am EST. Again, if you find you can’t join a session, just try back a little later since Rare might be running a simulated outage.
