For me they feeled legendary cause they where good and had a nice story behind them and that every one was able to get them sooner or later was a big plus.
I felt what you describe with legion and shadowlands legys. These where really awefull and really could have been just strong epics.
I think many players put to much weight on the term “legendary” like they want them to be super strong and also super rare cause how can something be legendary and accessible. Like i said with that legoc there should be just one of each item.
Legendary for me is the grade of the item wich says this is the best you can get and that comes not only in terms of raw power but also designe and lore for an item.
Imagine the best sword smith in a country that gets hailed as the legendary smith cause his blades are so good. If that guy sits down and makes enough swords for the whole army does his sowrds suddenly become les legendary?
Legendaries, especially weapons, just result in balancing issues. There are just 2 possibilities when a legendary weapon for specific speccs exists:
The speccs get balanced around NOT having the legendary weapon and become ABSOLUTELY broken once they get one. Thus the meta requires you to always run those classes with that legendary and only if they actually have the legendary
or
The speccs get balanced around having the legendary and just suck without it. So every specc, that can wield the legendary, will be declined for any meaningful content until they have the legendary.
I get that legendaries feel really “cool” for casual players but they’re just a balancing nightmare and should, if anything, only exist as cool visual items, not as actual gear upgrades.
It becomes the standard issue sword for the army. That is what it becomes. Its what Epic items are though.
I mean I get your point. From a “lorewise” perspective Leggos are fun because they show you a story, engage you in some plot, ect… And there you are 100% correct.
But legendaries also have an impact in pure gameplay and spec balance. And that is something that cannot be ignored.
And for something to be succesfull in a game, you need both. But if you really have to choose, gameplay >> lore.
That’s another part of the issue, there is no point in creating a “legendary” item that is then a guaranteed drop after 14 kills and as a result becomes an immediate whine point of “I can´t perform in +2s becase my class is balanced around having it” just because it actually becomes relevant in 15s and 20s that >90 of m+ runners (and by logical extension and basic math >95% of the total wow community) will never see from the inside to begin with.
In that case , it might as well jsut be a quest like the MoP + BfA capes or WoD ring that everysbody gets and be done with it. As we could clearly see with all teh whining about Fyr’alath and Naszùro, for 99% of the players they´re just anotehr must have statstick because the WoWhead BiS list says so, anyway. Or just remove them completely because the concept lost all meaning long before Shadowlands, anyway, at the very latest in legion where everything was a loot-pinata and you could get your BiS (or a total ) for falling down the stars and not dying
exactly make some item or two universal not class specific and then forcing or making people play this class because they have op item only they can wield it… at least that way we could have some belt or cloak or neck maybe with small choice of stat or option/passive to class spec
They didn’t and they wont, because Blizzard made the “genius” decision to partner with Mega Bloks instead, a Lego knockoff brand nobody ever heard of or cared about Lego was good enough for Overwatch, but apparently not for Warcraft. Missed opportunity, Lego Warcraft would have been a goldmine.
Or this is very good idea too. I often wondered why that was never implemented especially since modern wow has very much become a collectors game. Why not just implement a legendary transmog set. Each class with an extraordinary appearance - and by extraordinary I mean really, really extraordinary . The set can be orange instead of purple. No need to increase the ilvl or stats or any fancy ability, just keep it the same but the look needs to be unique and of course it needs be really grindy to obtain.
Maybe there will be a new legendary weapon or they stick with the one they added in 11.0.0, which seem to be a trinket or some sort. For those who want to look for it or look it up: Bronzebeard Family Compass
Going off assets that were datamined before release is always iffy, though…
People spent almost 10 years trying to get Peeps whistle before a GM had to clarify that it was never available in game and was just an idea that was thrown around before Ashes of Al’Ar was introduced, and not a “Phoenix’ Phoenix” or something like that. Same with the ashbringer in classic, or frostmourne has also been in the game files since vanilla…The more you rely on datamining, the more you run the risk of deluding yourself accidentally
All we know for sure is that the trinket is currently unavailable… But that doesn´t mean it will become available just because it´s in the game files
Because WoW started out with veritcal character progression (mainly gear rewards) and while there are MMORPGS with more horizontal character progression (mainly vanity rewards), switching a well established game and its progression system from vertical to horizontal is rather hard I imagine.
That being said - I’d love to see WoW go more horizontal. After playing this game for 20 years, gear rewards seem so… void to me.
Great, I got the BiS weapon from my vault…yeah! Oh… there’s a content patch in 2 weeks which renders my weapon to be completely useless? Sadge…
At this stage, I don’t really understand the greed for gear at all. Honestly speaking - the current gearing system rather makes me want to quit the game because gear is necessary for harder content but you’re unable to farm gear and just have to hope you get lucky with your once in a week roll (without any fail safe system in place).
Yes, we all need it to clear content but gear ultimately becomes irrelevant, while cool transmog gear or mounts keep their relevancy over years/addons to come.
In TWW nobody gives a flying carpet over your Mythic gear of Shadowlands at all. We get better gear from greens by questing at this point.
Transmog on the other hand (which would need to be made unobtainable after the given season is over) would still be pretty cool to look at and unique.
Appearances, and even then only Mythic ones, are only really “special” in the first weeks of the season in which they´re current. Removing them after the fact therefore serves no real purpose IMO except to prevent others from getting teh Mog for no good reason, at a point in time where it no longer means anything to anyone.
Not to mention that it would basically mean removing all gear drops from bosses that aren´t part of the current season, or replacing them with something completely different that doesn´t ahve the visual that the bosses dropped before… I think the first is clear why it wont work (esp when it’s still current expansion content, just last season /tier), and the latter is a lot of work redoing loot tables just to deprive players of mogs…
And it would kind of kill transmog as a system for many players, esp. newcomers that might like to get , say, the ulduar 25 set, but can´t because it was removed when ulduar became last tier.
With a more horizontal progression, Mythic sets would need to look even more special than they do now. Similar to the Challenge Mode sets from MoP. Given how the CM sets are still special because they were kinda hard to get AND are unobtainable now, I think Mythic sets would also stay relevant after the season ends.
The reason would be to actually make them a) special and b) worth the effort of actually aquiring them.
You simply need to give Mythic raiders something that sets them apart from other people for having completed the raid before it got irrelevant and A LOT easier by the next patch or even addon, other than just an achievement.
Maybe an additional special animation on said set would be enough, idk but there needs to be something to reward their effort.
You could either recolor the sets slightly (barely any effort if we’re honest here) or remove all loot from the mythic raid, yes.
In my hypothetical scenario, the gear progression would stay the same as it is right now except for M+10 and Mythic raids not dropping myth track gear. I’m not suggesting to remove literally ALL loot. Just the very high end loot.
The tier set would still be available, just not the Mythic variant of it. Or it would be available, just in a different tint. Picture the Armani Battle/War Bear vom ZA. You got that from rescuing that guy in ZA before the timer ran out. After the content patch, this got removed and later on re-introduced but just in a slightly different color.
This achieved 2 things.
a) let players who didn’t play or make it at the active season be able to get a very similar mount and
b) it did not invalidate the effort players who actually managed to beat the challenge.
I was a high end raider back in Cataclysm, specifically Dragon Soul. We had three rogues on the roster. Eventually we worked out the order in which they’d get to work on the legendary daggers. Rogue one quit the game almost immediately after getting theirs. Rogue two declared that they were burned out when they were halfway through the final stage and quit as well. The third rogue had quit the guild before that, joining another raiding guild specifically because they didn’t have a rogue on the roster and promised him that he’d be getting all the quest items. Along the way we picked up a fourth rogue, who completed the daggers about three months from the end of the expansion… they also quit immediately after completing them.
And our most recent experience with legendaries… I don’t think it made anyone happy. The people who could use the 2h axe were unhappy because their classes were undertuned, not reaching their full potential until they won the lottery. Meanwhile, other DPS (myself included, I’ll freely admit, I’d frequently grouch that enhancement shamans hadn’t had a legendary since literally the very first raid) were salty that they didn’t get the super shiny toy. And of course the first person within my raiding group to get it couldn’t afford the costs baked into the quest chain, or the tokens to buy the gold. So that added yet more frustration for everyone involved.
) for falling down the stars and not dying 
Lego was good enough for Overwatch, but apparently not for Warcraft. Missed opportunity, Lego Warcraft would have been a goldmine.