Legendary in Legion

Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor really changed the way that Legendary items worked. In previous expansions, a Legendary item was always a weapon (there was a tanking necklace in the vanilla beta, I believe, but it got cut.) Except for the drops in BC - which were just extra rare boss drops - legendaries always involved a quest chain. But the weapons were always part of one tier or another - they did wind up upgrading some of the old legendaries to make sure they were still good later in the expansion - I think Valanyr, the healing mace from Ulduar, was upgraded so that it would remain relevant in ICC - but they were generally pretty self-contained to certain raids and tiers.

There was also only one instance of a legendary having different variants. Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, which could be acquired in the original Naxxramas, and is now wielded by Khadgar, came in Mage, Warlock, Druid and... Priest flavors, I think (I don't think there was a Shaman version.)

But the other really defining thing about Legendary weapons was that they were for the hardcore. Early WoW actually made raiding a pretty much hardcore-only club, and legendaries required serious persistence (and luck.) It was by no means a guarantee that you'd get a legendary, and in fact, you could go for several expansions without seeing a legendary item fit for you (tanks really only got one in vanilla, the oft-spammed Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker - though theoretically a Death Knight tank could use Shadowmourne.)

Mists flipped this dynamic in so many ways that Legendaries are nearly unrecognizable. Mists established these chains as something that worked for all specs and roles. They were also completable in LFR - something that had not been the case in Cataclsym (much to my Rogue's sorrow, though now that DS is soloable, I'm working on it.) They also became expansion-spanning quest chains that involved numerous rewards that ramped up to the true legendary at the end. And of course, partially to satisfy the first change, they were no longer weapons, but instead universal gear slots - first cloaks and then rings.

Legendaries went from being a rare treat for the elite to being arguably more accessible than regular raiding. At this point, in fact, the legendary rings actually work best when you have lots of people in your raid wearing them. The uniqueness of the legendary item has been fundamentally undercut.

Now, there are certainly pros and cons to the new system. Having a quest chain that spans the whole expansion is a good way to add motivation to really explore the whole of what the expansion has to offer. The downside, though, is that if you start the chain late or have to take a break, there's a hell of a lot of catching up to do.

The system also prevents anyone from feeling left out (poor Enhancement Shamans) and also helps to resolve some of the balance that weapons like Dragonswrath used to upset.

Legion already has a pretty serious gear-related feature though - Artifact Weapons. We're going to be wielding some of the most famous weapons in the Warcraft universe. In a way, these go beyond Legendaries. In Wrath, we were able to build an axe that was almost as powerful as Frostmourne, whereas in Legion, Frost Death Knights will be able to wield sword literally made from its shards (like Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper were made from Ice, only if Ice had been an evil sword! /end Game of Thrones reference.)

In fact, this might present us with the obvious direction for legendaries. We're going to be spending the whole expansion upgrading our artifact weapons. So perhaps it will be as simple as letting those who go the extra mile upgrade their Ashbringers, Doomhammers, or what-have-yous to legendary status. In a sense, they'll already be legendary, but we'd be putting a final lair of polish on them.

Depending on how they structure the endgame in Legion, we might not even need a legendary chain to ensure that we take a tour through the world (and to be fair, Warlords' was really more a "tour through the raids.")

I wonder if artifact weapons might just take the place of a legendary quest chain in Legion - it could be the expansion that has no technical legendaries, though artifact weapons should fill out their spot quite nicely.

It's been a few months since Legion was announced, and we're now less than two weeks from Blizzcon, so again, I imagine we'll hear a bit about this relatively soon.