Rare's new game, Sea of Thieves, finally got into the hands of a large public with the recent Closed Beta test. Since then more than a few articles appeared on the Web mentioning that 100 players can be in the world at once. With the rise of the Battle Royale genre, this could be misinterpreted by some gamers and Rare Studio Head Craig Duncan took to Twitter this morning to clarify how dynamic matchmaking will work in the game.
Lots of #SeaOfThieves articles popping up, hard to keep up but noticing a few saying 100 players in the world - this is incorrect - we think of Sea of Thieves as a coop adventure where you encounter other players in the world, encounter frequency and variety is what is magic about Sea of Thieves.
Our vision is you and your crew embarking on adventures together, seeing those ships on the horizon or in the world & knowing they are another crews of real players on their own adventure & not knowing their intent or if they have treasure on board, we dynamically matchmake.
It’s variable, we add ships (not players) to each instance of the world, if ships leave we fill with new ones, if you end up being on your own we migrate you to another server - it’s all very clever - I’ve talked to press about this in a few interviews this week.
The game is now due for release on March 20th on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One, with full cross-play and cross-buy functionality courtesy of Xbox Play Anywhere. Thanks to the delays of Yakuza 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2, it might have a better chance to make a splash in the market.
Did you have the chance to try Sea of Thieves during the beta and if so, what do you think so far of Rare's shared world multiplayer adventure? Let us know in the comments.
