Apropos of nothing, Bethesda just released a premium subscription for Fallout 76 called Fallout 1st. You can get it for $12.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and it comes with access to private servers, 1,650 Atoms a month (or about $15 worth), and unique cosmetics. It also comes with a few features that players have been requesting for well over a year, like a bottomless Scrapbox for storing crafting components and a secondary portable fast travel point called the Survival Tent.
Private servers are the headlining feature for Fallout 1st. These servers effectively turn Fallout 76 into a single-player RPG at an additional cost, but server hosts will also have the option of inviting up to seven friends into their server. You'll need a Fallout 1st subscription to create a private server, but Bethesda confirmed that "should the owner of the private world leave, the world will still stay active as long as one other player in the world is a Fallout 1st member." The studio also said that mod support will come to Fallout 76 private servers "in the future."
The aforementioned Survival Tent sports a Stash, sleeping bag, Scrapbox, cooking station, and "an instrument to help you wind down after a day of exploring Appalachia." This is probably a guitar or something, but I choose to interpret the word "instrument" broadly and assume that it's a vibrating chair surrounded by kittens. The tent is basically a second camp that you can't customize, but it's also easier to move than your main base.
Notably, both the Scrapbox and Survival Tent can be used in public and private worlds, giving Fallout 1st subscribers a demonstrable advantage over non-subs. Bethesda says that "if you cancel your membership or it expires, you’ll still be able to access any Atoms received as well as the resources stored in your Scrapbox." You'll only be able to withdraw from your Scrapbox, though, not add to it.
As for the cosmetics included with Fallout 1st, you'll get access to a suite of exclusive emotes and icons as well as a Ranger armor set straight out of Fallout: New Vegas. Players have been asking for a Ranger getup since Fallout 76 was released, so many are understandably peeved that it's now available but locked behind an added paywall.
The release of Fallout 1st comes less than a week after the delay of the Wastelanders NPC expansion, which is now scheduled to arrive early next year.
Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer knew the Fallout 3 comparisons were coming, but also knew that what made his RPG special were the things that you couldn’t find in one playthrough
Fallout: New Vegas director on the “blessing” of working on the RPG: “I never thought I’d get a chance to work on Fallout [again]”
