New Video Accompanies Announcement of New Technical Alpha for Sea of ThievesÂ
Rare has just announced that select players will be able to playtest the Sea of Thieves Technical Alpha. These Lucky few will be selected from their Insider Programme, reached via manual sign-up, and will play on Windows 10 and Xbox One.
While this is very exciting news for anyone anticipating this swashbuckling, treasure-hunting pirate adventure, Rare has made clear that only around a thousand players will reach the Alpha. This comes despite the fact that thousands have already signed on. But developers explain their basic purpose in the following:
As with the rest of the Insider Programme, the contents of the Technical Alpha will be subject to the NDA all Insiders must agree to when signing up for the programme.
We’re powering into this phase of development with three main goals in mind:
1. We want to deliver on our promise to Insiders to help us test early game mechanics and services at a larger scale than anything we’ve delivered before.
2. We want to give our participating Insiders the opportunity to provide feedback about their experience.
3. We want to use this feedback and our data insights to make meaningful changes to our game.
Our first Technical Alpha play session will take place next weekend, from December 16th-18th. It’ll be available during several timeslots throughout the weekend, after which we’ll thank our participating pirates and give the servers a rest while we take on board everything we’ve learned, determining the best ways to apply it to Sea of Thieves’ development.
Along with the announcement, a new trailer has been released giving players a better look at gameplay mechanics, the high seas, and combat. Representing patch 0.1, the video shows quest undertakings, the death system, and more… View Patch 0.1 here:
Since there’s no release date as of yet, players are left to speculate. Most likely, a playable beta will come in 2017. But comment you’re own expectations for Sea of Thieves. What do you think of gameplay so far?