Five and a half years and endless requests from the community later, Rare has announced it’ll finally be adding private servers to Sea of Thieves - meaning a single crew of up to four players can explore the world without fear of PvP encounters - starting this December, as part of the multiplayer pirate adventure’s Season 10.
Season 10 itself gets underway on 19th October, and will introduce a major new feature each month ahead of 2024 - essentially meaning all content originally planned for 2023 will arrive before the end of the year, despite a painfully protracted, seven-month-long Season 9.
First up, on 19th October, Sea of Thieves will introduce Guilds, described as a “new way for players to form meaningful bonds beyond their immediate crew”. Essentially, any player that’s reached Captain status and has their own ship can start a guild - picking a name, logo, and emblem when then do so - which can then support up to 24 invited players.
Progression and loot reduced by 30%, level capped at 40, and can’t join guilds. Doesn’t really feel like they made it a viable option to play the game. Though I can’t say for sure how bad those handicaps are, I never got the game due to the forced PvP and the militant community.
I stopped playing because I was a solo sailor on a Sloop that got absolutely destroyed repeatedly by full crews on big ships. The excitement of trying to elude unfriendly crews was fun for a while, but sometimes I just want to explore, dammit.
My wife and I stopped playing due to the aggressive playerbase, tho actually my greater beef is with those players who act nice at first and then sink your ship, spawn camp, and steal your loot.
We got at least 150 hours of play together, so we did last quite a while. I’d like to play a cozier game though, so this will be nice once available.