I've been thinking a lot about the legendary questline in MoP, specifically the pros and cons for such a system. Mostly, I've been finding it quite ironic that the most casual-friendly legendary item ever can actually be detrimental to one particular group of casuals: those returning late in the expansion who hadn't played much of the expansion previously.
As a previously hardcore raider myself (in Cata), I skipped most of Mists because (1) I didn't particularly care for the theme of the expansion and (2) I was busy IRL. Having come back to the game a few weeks ago, I have noticed that not having a legendary cloak makes finding groups and a guild particularly difficult (most guilds/groups say outright not to bother applying without a cloak). While still not as high of a hurdle to jump as in vanilla/TBC (expansios with essentially no late-expac catch up mechanics), it feels much more time consuming to "catch up" now compared to e.g. late WOTLK or Cata. In Wrath I took 5 alts through normal ICC and got geared easily, finding pugs was no problem. Now even Flex groups often want 545+ ilvl which you basically need to do flex+ to even achieve, lol.
Point being: the legendary questline seems to make one thing very important: playing the entire expansion. Players who do not play the entire expansion (or at least play a few weeks each time a major patch hits) are the ones who fall behind. My though is: this seems like an interesting business decision to keep people subbed for the expansion, and "punish" players who would not play and just come back at the end.
Does anyone else wonder if this was part of the decision-making process for the questline? I don't necessarily offer this question with positive or negative connotations. I just find it interesting, mainly.