Legendary items in WoW: Legion are a mystery. Now even the community manager is causing confusion.
Hardly any topic in World of Warcraft attracts as much attention as legendary items. No wonder, as the orange items have a item level of 910 and are therefore among the best items one can obtain. In addition, they often come with powerful, passive effects that can even modify a class’s playstyle.
Legendary items are distributed randomly from various sources. World quests, dungeon bosses, raid bosses, and PvP battles can all drop the coveted items. However, many players believe that the time played also affects the drop rate of legendaries. In the official forum, Community Manager Aerythlea addresses this topic and clarifies a few things:
“In short: The time played (/played) and the average item level have no effect on the chance of getting a legendary.
To be a bit more specific: Player A and Player B both have exactly 10 days /played at level 110, and neither of them has received a legendary item yet.
Player A spends most of the time just sitting in Dalaran or the Class Hall, chatting with the guild, or hanging out in trade chat. (…) Aside from an occasional world quest chest and a Mythic dungeon, he doesn’t do much that rewards legendary items. Player A might get lucky with his next world quest chest and receive a legendary, but he would be a statistical outlier.
Player B has spent most of the time in content that can yield legendary items. He does every single world quest, clears the Emerald Nightmare every week, runs random heroic dungeons, and helps friends in mythic and “Mythic+” dungeons.
At this point, the chance of Player B getting a legendary will be significantly higher than that of Player A. Because Player B plays much more content that can be rewarded with legendary items, his “bad luck protection” continues to build up. Hence the saying, “if you play the content, the legendary will come eventually.”
Thus, Aerythlea contradicts the statements made by Game Director Ion Hazzikostas a few weeks ago, stating that there is no “bad luck protection” and that only the sheer number of completed content someday statistically leads to a legendary item.
However, the patch notes for 7.1 also stated that players who have not received a legendary until now are now more likely to obtain one. The truth will likely lie somewhere in between.
