There's another Sea of Thieves beta-style Scale Test happening this weekend
You've got to be shipping me.
If you've been been missing the roar of the waves and the sway of the ocean this week, and generally suffering from severe Sea of Thieves withdrawal, there's some excellent news: Rare is holding yet another beta-style Scale Test on PC and Xbox One this weekend.
Those that yearn for a plundering will be able to raise anchor in the latest Scale Test form tomorrow, Friday March 2nd at 10am GMT (2am PST). It's as brisk as ever though, and you'll need to hang up your hook on Sunday March 4th at 10am GMT (2am PST).
If you'd like to get involved, you'll either need to have pre-ordered the game or to have signed up to the Sea of Thieves Insider programme. Unless things have changed over the last seven days, you should still be able to register for the latter.
Accessing the beta build can be a little fussy (especially on PC), so it's worth having a read through Rare's official installation instructions first. Additionally, remember that you'll need an Xbox Live Gold membership if you're planning to play on Xbox One.
Once again, the purpose of this Scale Test is to try and minimise the possibility of Rare's servers falling over and spoiling everyone's fun on launch day. As such, it won't all be smooth sailing: "Not only are we looking to hit scale, we will also purposefully be stressing our services by throttling performance at certain times," explains Rare, "testing the game in different data centres around the world, and simulating deliberate outages".
You can expect to experience interrupted sessions, issues using the in-game shops, and problems joining the game at certain times during this latest test weekend.
Rare also notes that the Scale Test will again have the same reduced feature set seen in the Closed Beta, meaning that you'll be limited to Voyages assigned by the Gold Hoarders trading company. An expanded Beta, offering a taste of the full Sea of Thieves experience, is likely to occur prior to the game's launch on March 20th.