Sea of Thieves Scale Test Announced for February 16th
Sea of Thieves will be getting several scale tests in the near future; the first of them starting on February 16th. The scale tests will allow the developers to find the weak spots in their servers and solve issues before launch. They’ll intentionally stress the servers out and cause problems, in order to deliver a well-rounded game.
The launch date of Sea of Thieves is quickly coming along. There’s only a little more than a month until we all get the chance to sail the seven seas. Recently, the Sea of Thieves closed beta wrapped up, and players have, of course, uncovered some problems. That’s the point of a beta, after all. Among other things, the sheer amount of players has unveiled some issues with data bottlenecks. So, the developers have decided to host several scale tests in order to really see how much their servers can take.
The first of these scale tests will start on Friday, February 16th at 10 AM GMT (2 AM PST, or 5 AM EST). It will end on Sunday, February 18th, at the same time. The aim of the scale tests, according to the announcement on the Sea of Thieves official website, is to “try and hit a higher concurrent players number than we’ve ever seen before.” That means that those who have taken part in the closed beta won’t really have anything new to look forward to content-wise. That’s intentional, so that the developers can get consistent results.
On the other hand, you can absolutely expect to encounter numerous issues. The developers will be intentionally causing trouble, like “throttling performance at certain times, testing the game in different data centers around the world, and simulating deliberate outages.” There may be problems with sessions being interrupted, issues with using shops, not being able to join the game, etc. It’s all for the greater good. As for who will have access to the scale tests, naturally, those that took part in the closed beta will be invited to log back in. Also, Xbox Insiders will be able to take the game for a spin. In the future, there will be another closed beta, but for now, it’s all about the scale tests.
