Legendaries no longer have a soft cap in WoW. We will explain what this means to you here.
Once again, it’s about legendary items in World of Warcraft. Players have discovered over the past few weeks that after obtaining the 4th legendary item, they receive new ones very slowly. This led to the theory that a player can only have 4 legendary items at the same time. Some even started deleting their items to make “room for new Legendaries” – this has now turned out to be useless and incorrect.
In line with Thanksgiving, Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas has addressed the official forum again and explained what the “soft cap” for legendaries was and what exactly has changed.
We have translated the main parts for you:
“We started (with the legendaries) stingily, because from there we could change it more flexibly. (Since then we have increased the drop rate of legendaries in Patch 7.1). We also built in some protective measures to keep the difference between the luckiest and unluckiest players small. Luck is inevitably a factor in such games, but with millions of players at the same time, uncontrolled randomness would result in some people not getting any legendaries even though they play several hours every day. Therefore, we implemented the so-called “Bad Luck Protection”, which increases the drop chances each time you didn’t get a legendary.
As the name suggests, this protection was intended for unfortunate players. Those who were already quite lucky did not need this help. We drew the line at 4 legendaries and intended to increase this over time. If you had 4 legendaries, you could still receive more, but the invisible hand of “Bad Luck Protection” would no longer apply to you. This also means that those who already had 4 legendaries by mid-October counted among the super lucky people. They didn’t need help to get more. [There was no Bad Luck Protection until mid-October]
What we did not consider was how much the most dedicated players would strive for acquiring artifact power. By mid-November, the first questions arose about whether there was a limit of 4 legendaries, and we realized there was a group of players who had played so much content that they actually had an expected legendary count of 4 per person. They didn’t need much luck to achieve that. (Note: We are talking about a very small group. That’s a few hundred out of millions of players. They are overrepresented in these discussions because it affects them)
So we removed the soft cap a week ago. The “Bad Luck Protection” now counts infinitely. (…) If some players reach a point where they have all legendaries, then so be it. They have certainly earned it, and there will be more in the future. The gear limit continues to ensure that the power difference between players does not become too great.”
Or as it is modernly abbreviated with a TL;DR: The “Bad Luck Protection” is now also activated for players who already have 4 or more legendaries. Previously, there was no real “cap” on legendaries, only the additional bonus was lost if you already had 4 or more.
Is it a good change, or do you see it critically?
In addition to the soft cap, there’s a “hot topic”, the bad luck protection. There is also news from Blizzard
WoW: Legion – “Bad Luck Protection” for Legendaries? It actually exists!
