Earlier this year during E3 week, it was confirmed that Fallout 76, the post-apocalyptic multiplayer RPG by Bethesda, was finally getting human NPCs in a free, expansion-sized update titled Wastelanders. However, Bethesda revealed today that the update will be missing its original fall 2019 launch window, and has now been pushed back to the first quarter of 2020.
The developer said it needs the additional time to make it the "best, most polished update it can be," which is turning out to be one of the largest expansions made by Bethesda, and added, "we apologize for this delay but know it will be worth the extra time."
Alongside adding human NPCs for the first time, Wastelanders is slated to bring a new dialog system, questlines with choices and consequences, companions, and factions, among other features, bringing it in line with other games in the popular RPG franchise.
While waiting, players will soon be able to spin up private servers to play with friends in Appalachia, as the highly-requested feature will begin shipping next week. Players will be purchasing the private spaces straight from Bethesda, which says modding capabilities will also be introduced to these servers in the future.
For the rest of 2019, Bethesda plans to push out smaller Fallout 76 updates with bug fixes and various community-requested quality-of-life improvements. The studio is also working on adding more major features like a public test server, perk loadouts, and new events as part of future updates.