Rare's latest game Sea Of Thieves has had over one million players in its first 48 hours according to a launch status update posted on the game's official website.
Sea of Thieves is a game that's all about sailing the high seas by yourself or (much more ideally) with a group of friends as you ransack fellow players' ships and explore islands filled with spooky skeletons. (Going by our own Anson Chan's recent review of the game, there are a lot of spooky skeletons in this title.) You'll pick from a selection of randomly-generated pirates to represent yourself and drop into the wide expanse of the ocean with the choice of sailing around freely or aiming to complete more structured quests and storylines.
The game had a few stress tests prior to its release to ensure that the servers would be ready for its public release and it was probably a very good idea that Rare was so thorough - according to Executive Producer Joe Neate, Sea of Thieves has had over one million players log in to play the game in its first 48 hours. This many players logging in has also brought some technical issues with the sheer scale of things, something that was addressed in a post-launch Developer update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0KiM8n7e0w
Despite the stress tests that took place before launch, Sea of Thieves is nonetheless having some issues with players being able to log in - something that is certainly not an unusual situation for the first few days of a modern multiplayer game.) Peak times have seen as many as 5,000 players attempting to log on per minute, and countless scallywags have complained of issues with delays in receiving quest rewards and unlocking achievements. In total, the developers have seen 3 to 4 times more concurrent players than during any of the previous stress tests. While these delays are quite unfortunate, they are a result of the traffic that Rare has to handle, with the load of one million players looting & pillaging their way through the game's world. Several of them have been pegged for a patch next week, and some are being looked at to see if they can fix the issues on their backend.
Aside from launch day troubles, other issues remain for the game. IGN requested comment regarding the current state of content & cosmetics after a number of users on the game's subreddit had complained about the seeming lack of options to choose from. Rare has responded and stated that their current focus is stabilizing the game's servers - an endeavor that is already well underway and has produced some results - and then they'll move on to adding more gameplay and cosmetic content for the players to enjoy.
If you don't yet own Sea of Thieves, you can grab it for yourself on the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 or Xbox One for $59.99 or your regional equivalent.
What do you think of so many players logging in to play Sea of Thieves in its first couple of days? What has been your experience with the game so far? Let us know in the comments below!
