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Announcing the Sea of Thieves Technical Alpha - December 16th-18th

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Bits N Pieces

Member
At its heart, our upcoming shared world pirate game Sea of Thieves is all about you, your friends and the high seas adventures you’ll be embarking upon together. With this in mind, our ongoing approach to game design is to craft a wealth of features and systems suited to all manner of player motivations. Our intention is to get that content into players’ hands as soon as possible, giving us valuable feedback and insights into the diverse ways that people will play and experience Sea of Thieves.

As part of our commitment to pulling in player feedback throughout development, we recently launched our Sea of Thieves Insider Programme, inviting passionate fans to sign up and share their experiences and suggestions. Today, we’re excited to announce that our early Technical Alpha phase will kick off on December 16th with a series of scheduled playtests, and we’ll be inviting selected players from the Insider Programme to join us.
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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.
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We’re overjoyed to see that thousands of eager gamers have already signed up for our Insider Programme, but the scale of the weekend’s session will be limited to around 1000 players only. This gives us the right scale and experience for our first test, and will allow us to focus closely on the feedback we receive. As we move on through the Technical Alpha phase, we’ll gradually increase the player base and frequency of sessions in line with the game’s evolution.

Ready to find out more? Watch the video to glimpse which new gameplay features will be included during this first round of the Sea of Thieves Technical Alpha. Fully convinced and ready to go? Jump in now and join our Insider Programme to be in with a chance to play – and check out our official Forums and the Sea of Thieves subreddit for all the latest news and updates!
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https://www.seaofthieves.com/updates/articles/announcing-the-sea-of-thieves-technical-alpha

Video showing how the mission structure works

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc-7GHh5iP8

Make me walk the plank if old.
 
L

Leflus

Member
Nice to finally see a short and concise video about the (current) gameplay loop in SoT. Excited to hear what people will say about the game.

I'm still torn on the game, though. On one hand, I dig the art direction and world design. On the other, I'm not really interested in such a multiplayer centric game. I like to play games at my own pace.

Oh how I wish it had a story mode. : / I basically want Rare's take on The Wind Waker.
 
Z

Zedox

Member
My gawd...I was halfway tempted to buy this game...now I'm like 99% sure I will. I WILL BE THE PIRATE KING! GOMU GOMU NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
 
B

blue_phazon

Member
Oh man I love how there's no waypoints, and you can have one of the crew members hold up the map so the rest can see it lol
 
C

Chris1

Member
That mission looked decent. Just hope it's not all "Find the X" fetch missions.

If there's missions where treasure is hidden in caves and you need to fight your way through enemies and do puzzles and shit to reach it I think I'm gonna like this game. A lot.
 
G

Granjinha

Member
The 0.10 alpha video looked great.

Fortinbras said:
I don't think it is. The game can be preordered for 30 €, for example on amazon.de

Honestly I never expected anything different.
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I doubt that it won't. This looks like a massive project. Don't know what you expected tbh.

Chris1 said:
That mission looked decent. Just hope it's not all "Find the X" fetch missions.

If there's missions where treasure is hidden in caves and you need to fight your way through enemies and do puzzles and shit to reach it I think I'm gonna like this game. A lot.
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They said there will be a lot of enemies and stuff, like puzzles and caves. Also big monsters like Krakens in the sea.
 
D

Doffen

Member
The video that details the 0.1 update makes it look promising. Hope they eventually add story-based missions for the final release.
 
N

Nuborn

Member
That video clearly displayed pretty much the core of the game it seems, looks solid to boot. Can't wait to hopefully have a crack at it.
 
C

Chris1

Member
Granjinha said:
The 0.10 alpha video looked great.



I doubt that it won't. This looks like a massive project. Don't know what you expected tbh.



They said there will be a lot of enemies and stuff, like puzzles and caves. Also big monsters like Krakens in the sea.
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It was $40 on Amazon.com when it was first announced aswell. The pricing around this game is pretty strange. It's full price on Amazon.co.uk though.

And nice, I honestly think this game has potential to be massive. It's got pirates, MMO shared world shooter, people liked it at E3 and will most likely have free DLC. Plus it seems to cater to PvP guys and also PvE/exploration guys like me. It's up to Rare to do an amazing beta now and get people to overlook the art style. As said before I can see this being another Division, a good open beta makes the game blowup big time.
 
Prithee Be Careful

Prithee Be Careful

Industry Professional
So... can I sail a ship by myself or will I need a crew? It's looking a lot like the latter based on what I'm seeing here - not sure how I feel about an enforced co-op mode (don't have many friends on XB).
 
S

shoreu

Member
PritheeBeCareful said:
So... can I sail a ship by myself or will I need a crew? It's looking a lot like the latter based on what I'm seeing here - not sure how I feel about an enforced co-op mode (don't have many friends on XB).
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you can but it's going to be harder.

This is not a single player game.
 
S

Shiggy

Member
Bits N Pieces said:
Is it worth taking the risk to find out what happens?
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I simply doubt that the NDA can be enforced if someone really wants to share footage, screens or impressions.


TurtleSnatcher said:
Seeing as they have to probably take your Microsoft Account info, they'll have all they will need.
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That assumes your Microsoft account has your true address and name. And can't you just create a new account?


Don't be a dick to the devs ;(
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I won't play the alpha or beta of the game.
 
T

The_blonde_and_blue

Member
Man, I've only been following this game here and there, but it looks better every single time I see it.

I hope it's as open ended and free playing at it looks. I see a lot of potential for shenanigans. Looks awesome.
 
N

nstine

Member
PritheeBeCareful said:
So... can I sail a ship by myself or will I need a crew? It's looking a lot like the latter based on what I'm seeing here - not sure how I feel about an enforced co-op mode (don't have many friends on XB).
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In the full game there will be smaller ships as well, but I'm not sure if they are in the initial alpha test. My guess would be no as it seems likely that they would want to test ships/quests with a full crew first.
 
B

blue_phazon

Member
PritheeBeCareful said:
So... can I sail a ship by myself or will I need a crew? It's looking a lot like the latter based on what I'm seeing here - not sure how I feel about an enforced co-op mode (don't have many friends on XB).
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I believe you can sail a tiny boat as a solo pirate, but of course it's not going to be as powerful as one with a crew.

Also, I'm sure on launch there will be plenty of gaffers to play with! Someone will probably make a Sea of Thieves GAF club or something.
 
T

thenextboss

Banned
This is the game I am most excited to play in 2017. I am 39 years old and ready to play pirate.

I wish this game had some of the silliness of Velvet Sundown...that game knew how to have fun talking to other players on a boat.
 
G

GuitarAtomik

Member
Shiggy said:
That assumes your Microsoft account has your true address and name. And can't you just create a new account?
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Yeah, but anything tied to your banned account is going to be hobbled and none of your purchases are going to transfer to your new account.
 
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