Bethesda Game Studios is especially well known for its sprawling, single-player epics in the "Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout" franchises, but it is taking a big step into online multiplayer with November's "Fallout 76." (Among Bethesda Game Studios' sister developers, ZeniMax Online Studios created and maintains massively multiplayer "The Elder Scrolls Online.")
Taking place within the postapocalyptic wasteland setting that its franchise is known for, "Fallout 76" is set before other entries to the franchise and has players working to reclaim a partially irradiated USA. While players are trying to strengthen a simulated remnant's chances of survival, Bethesda Softworks are preparing to strengthen their online servers through a number of pre-release tests.
During the beta test phase, "one of our primary goals is to stress test and break the game," the studio explained in a September 27 blog post. Multiplayer servers will be online "for anywhere between four to eight hours" per day, because "that's the best way to put all our systems to the test and see how they respond." "Then we'll fix what we need to fix and do it again and again from the start of B.E.T.A. until a few days before launch."
The lengthy beta testing period, as much as three weeks long for the game's community of Xbox One players, is also expected to serve as an effective marketing exercise designed to pull more observers off the fence and into the pre-order queue: "from the very start of the [beta,] beginning on October 23, you will be free to stream and talk about all your experiences with Fallout 76 with the rest of the world."
Hence Bethesda's promise to provide introductory notes for character design and customization, wasteland survival, and multiplayer in general, as well as gameplay video to expand on a cinematic introduction that accompanied the beta date announcement.
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