First, some facts to establish context about who I am and where I'm coming from.
- I've played SoT for 375 hours since it came on Steam (as of this post).
- I purchased the game for myself and for two of my friends that I regularly play with.
- The Adventure genre in media (particularly swashbuckling/pirate genres) is my favourite for films, movies, games, etc.
- I'm a Canadian male in the 25-35 age range.
When we first started playing together, my friends and I were sailing around on a brig just trying to figure everything out. We were babes in the woods, and each new discovery soaked us with wonder and joy. The sun soaked sea thrilled our hearts with the endless opportunities that awaited us, and we marveled at the beauty and the feeling of freedom that the game provided us. I scampered up the ladder to the crow's nest and gazed off towards the horizon with bright eyes and excitement in my heart. With one friend at the helm, and another at the map below deck, I'll never forget the following exchange:
Helmsman: Where are we anyway?
Navigator: We're off the edge of the map.
Me in a panic as I see the previously picturesque ocean become an angry mass of brig-sinking hate: TURN AROUND TURN AROUND TURN AROUND
We didn't sink, but that first half hour of exploration, excitement, fear, panic, and jubilant relief will always stick with me.
I arrived well after the game's community and culture had been established, and purposefully avoided watching gameplay because I knew I wanted to play one day and didn't want to spoil myself. The trials, evolution, and memes of the past that every old salt and pirate legend were intimately familiar with were utterly unknown to me.
In the first week or two everything was fresh, and almost everything was kind of confusing. Aside from extreme basics taught to me by the Maiden Voyage and talking with the NPCs, I didn't really understand the lore or mechanics of the game. I played on my own, with friends, with randoms, on every type of ship. I gradually learned more and more from experienced vets and slightly less new players like me (who had heard what they knew from other older players) and despite the battles and odd toxic person, every server I played in reinforced the idea that the SoT community was healthy and vibrant.
The following weeks due to COVID-19 my friends and I devoted more and more free time to playing, and as our experience grew so did our Reputation with the Big Three trading companies. We got lost in beautiful and at times frustrating islands, greeted the Ferryman countless times, created storylines for our pirates, made friend and foe alike from strangers we met on the sea, and every voyage got that little bit closer to being pirate legends.
Once the Mysterious Stranger taught us the shanty that allowed us to meet the Pirate Lord once again, we lost little to no momentum in our efforts to acquire more, to be better. We wanted to be deserving of our achievement, and after an extended chase and battle against a challenging crew that tested us in every way imaginable... we emerged victorious. Through cunning, subterfuge, skill of arms, cannon, and ship the day was ours (and so was the loot). We felt worthy.
Since then I keep finding new and interesting secrets in the Sea of Thieves world. I find absolute scoundrels that I begrudgingly respect, and glorious seadogs that I am proud to be able to call upon in future voyages should I need them, or they need me. The trolls and griefers are (to me) rare, though I admit I spend far more time in Adventure than I do Arena.
The bugs and glitches that rear their heads usually just amuse me as opposed to screwing me over, sometimes I lose something great or end up in a slow motion train-wreck when servers merge. Only once did I feel the need to report another player in the hopes that they would be banned (they dropped the N bomb). If due to a technical error I had to restart the game, lose a battle, or lose my Emissary 5 and epic loot I'd be salty for a few minutes, then either start over or wait until the next day for a new voyage and new adventures.
The beauty, delivery, spirit, joy, and storytelling of the game far outweighed the crashes, the bugs, the limitations of the code. Not just the storytelling of the Sea of Thieves as a whole, but the stories me and my friends created and reminisce over. We tell each other what we did if we didn't sail together, and we tell our other friends who don't play what we did with excited energy and earnestness.
I love the Sea of Thieves, not just because it is the type of game that I think I have been waiting for since childhood, but because of the experiences I've been creating with friends old and new. Because of how clear it is (to me) that Rare, the devs, the artists (writers/audio/visual/etc), and the community deeply care about this game and want it to grow and and mature and be polished and be fun.
I know the game and community has it's problems, every online game and community does. That's practically an expectation I have for virtually anything involving humans surrounding any given particular Something. I know from Rare's end there's been a maelstrom of human emotions and challenges, and from the community separate but similar experiences. I know that I heavily splurged by buying this game three times for me and my friends, and I know that I have no regrets.
I guess I want to say thank you to Rare and the community, for making this game and for keeping this game going (though I know SoT isn't very old as far as online games go). We may not agree on everything on the state of the game and what direction it should go, but I think outside of a few outliers because of how bell curves work the majority of us care about this silly pirate game and the space it gives us to play in. I genuinely hope that the relationship and collaboration between company and community flourishes and becomes a standard of the industry, for the benefit of both parties.
We all sail together.
