Sea Of Thieves Release: Servers Are Live

Sea of Thieves is a big release for a variety of reasons. It's the first big original game from Rare in quite some time, the first big Xbox One exclusive of the year, and the first of Microsoft's games to launch day and date on Game Pass. Whatever your reason for playing, you'll be doing so at a different time depending on where in the world you reside. Although it has a release date of March 20, this is an online-only game, and servers go online at various times in different regions.

The first players are actually already online--regions like New Zealand, Australia, and Japan are already in, but you'll still be waiting if you're located in the West. Those in the UK won't get online until late tonight--12 AM GMT on Tuesday, to be precise. In the US and Canada, meanwhile, servers go online at 9 PM PT/12 AM ET, so you'll actually be able to play on Monday if you're not in the Eastern Time Zone.

A full schedule for when servers come online can be seen on the Sea of Thieves website. This gradual rollout will hopefully prevent any online connection issues from popping up, but you can keep an eye on the situation with Rare's server status page.

As noted above, Xbox Game Pass member will get access to Sea of Thieves for free at the same time the game goes on sale for Xbox One and PC. That allows you to play for as long as you remain a Game Pass subscriber. Alternatively, you can get a free copy of the game right now by purchasing an Xbox One X.

Unfortunately, reviewers weren't granted access to Sea of Thieves in advance of its release, so we don't yet have a review. You can check back in the coming days for our impressions of the game. In the meantime, check out the 10 things we learned from the recent beta.