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.
It’s too bad because I really wanted a co-op black flag-ish experience but it seems that won’t be happening any year soon. The closest I got was Pulsar: Lost Colony which I had a bit of fun with friends in but obviously that’s more space pirate than pirate. Void Crew also looks like it might be good but just came out in early access and looks like it needs some polish based on the reviews