After months in a closed alpha the fan revival project to bring back The Elder Scrolls Legends, known as The Elder Scrolls Legends Reborn or simply TESL Reborn, has finally entered open beta!
This news is of particular interest to this humble writer, who to this very day still gets the occasional viewer comment during live streams about how someone “has been following since the days of Legends!”
But why was Legends so beloved that a group of dedicated fans spent so long bringing it back?
To fully appreciate this massive undertaking & triumph, we must go back to the year 2015:
The beginning of Legends
When Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls Legends at E3, it was entering an increasingly competitive digital collectible card game market dominated by games such as Hearthstone and Magic The Gathering. Rather than simply placing Elder Scrolls characters onto a conventional card-game framework, Bethesda intended for Legends to be designed around unique mechanics to give it its own identity.
Development was initially led by Dire Wolf Digital, a studio with extensive experience in strategy card games. Bethesda supplied the Elder Scrolls universe, characters, lore and visual identity, while Dire Wolf handled the card-game design and technology.
The result was a game built around five attributes: Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Endurance, & Willpower. As well as a deck-building system that initially allowed players to combine two attributes, later expanded to three. It’s most recognizable feature was the battlefield’s division into two lanes. Cards summoned to one lane could fight normally, while the Shadow Lane provided temporary protection from attacks by the opponent.
Another important innovation was the Rune and Prophecy system. As a player’s health fell, runes would break and provide additional cards. If the drawn card had the Prophecy keyword, it could immediately be played, even during the opponent’s turn. This gave a player who was losing an opportunity to respond and made attacking the opponent’s health a strategic decision rather than simply a race to zero.
The game also featured a surprisingly well realized & enjoyable single-player component, in addition to the expected competitive multiplayer modes.
Legends entered closed beta in April 2016. Bethesda subsequently opened the game to everyone on August 4, 2016, beginning an open beta that lasted roughly seven months.
The launch & growth of Legends
The PC version officially left beta on March 9, 2017. This was followed by a rapid expansion onto other platforms. The iPad version arrived on March 23, Android tablets followed, and Mac support arrived in May. Smartphone versions for iOS and Android were released in July.
One of the game’s strengths was its cross-platform progression. Players could move between PC, tablet and phone while retaining their collection and account progress.
The launch also established the content model of regular balance changes, which would be an important part of the game’s identity. Each new expansion would add not only new cards, but whole new mechanics.
The first signs of trouble
In 2018, Bethesda moved development from Dire Wolf Digital to Sparkypants Studios. This was not merely a change of developer. Bethesda commissioned a major technological rebuild of the game.
Sparkypants rebuilt the client and backend from the ground up with new code. The objective was to preserve the actual gameplay while improving the interface, performance and underlying technology.
Various changes were introduced, from a completely rebuilt client & backend improvements; to cosmetic changes such as the user interface, game board, & animations. This however drew criticism from players who liked the game the way it was, and resulted in accusations of trying to make the game more “Hearthstone-ish.”
The turning point, and years spent in limbo
No doubt those of you who are players of the game have been waiting for one single word which represents the sole reason for the downfall of Legends: INVASION
And indeed, the introduction of the Invasion mechanic in October of 2019 as part of the Jaws of Oblivion expansion proved to be incredibly unpopular.
To be fair, Legends was never the most well balanced game. I myself would often groan at the realization that my opponent had leaned heavily into Khajjit cards!
But the new “strategy” of putting down an Oblivion Gate and then focusing solely on powering it up as fast a possible would often lead to instant quitting, or targeting the gate with an Action card to destroy it even if had just been put there and it would have been more strategic to let it gain power first. The equivalent of a harsh scolding.
While likely just one factor among many, just two months later in December of 2019 Bethesda announced that development of new content was being put “on hold for the foreseeable future.”
The decision meant that the planned future expansion schedule effectively ended. New expansions and major future content were no longer actively being developed.
However, this wasn’t a full shutdown of the game…yet.
The game remained online, new players could still download it, multiplayer remained available, as well as the single-player campaigns. Bethesda continued providing maintenance, monthly reward cards and in-game events. And a dedicated player-base kept the game alive.
This went on for years. Years without a single word.
The final shutdown
In late 2024, Bethesda announced that The Elder Scrolls Legends would finally be taken offline.
The game was removed from the Steam store, and players received a final period in which store purchases and entry into events were reduced to one gold. This effectively allowed remaining players to experience as much of the game’s content as possible before the end.
The servers were permanently shut down on January 30, 2025. And unlike some discontinued games, Legends did not receive an offline mode. Which meant that even the game’s single-player campaigns became inaccessible. In point of fact, Legends holds the unfortunate distinction of being the first Elder Scrolls game to ever be made unplayable, only joined by Blades this past June.
The last day that The Elder Scrolls: Legends was playable was January 30th, 2025. Several Legends streamers, including Yours Truly, spent the evening playing the game one last time and reminiscing about the good times with their viewers. Then the servers shut down and we all bid the game a fond farewell.
Until now.
The Elder Scrolls Legends Reborn
Among other attempts at preserving Legends, the most ambitious effort has been Reborn. The objective was to create a server emulator capable of communicating with the original game client, allowing it to function in much the same way it did when Bethesda’s servers were operating.
The project is associated with community developers including RenianVZ and Maker83, with additional contributors involved at different stages. The work began before the official shutdown, with server-emulation work reported as early as December 2024.
Various public updates by developer Renian have been periodically released showing the project advancement, each one revealing more complete gameplay and integration of more and more game mechanics.
The first of these public announcements was in the spring of 2025, and in November of 2025 the Reborn team announced that alpha testing was live!
The alpha was deliberately limited to a small number of testers. The purpose was to identify bugs while also controlling the load on the replacement servers. The developers described the system as effectively an emulator using a private server while utilizing the original Steam client.
On October 9th 2025, Renian announced on The Elder Scrolls Legends Discord channel & Reddit page that they were preparing to activate all registered accounts which had signed up for Reborn. Instructions on how to register on their website, attach your Steam account, and download the needed plugin were also provided. The next day he posted again that all accounts were active and that the open beta was now live, adding “May Akatosh grant us strength.”
Since then there has been universal thanks from the community, to which this writer would like to add his voice: Thank you to all who labored long and hard to make the dream of bringing back Legends a reality! Only Bethesda can decide how long this new life will be allowed to continue, but for now I am looking forward to many more hours of Legends. Something that we wouldn’t have were it not for the work of some very dedicated individuals.
See you all on the battlefield!