Wild Speculation on Legendaries in Mists

The community suffered a mini-explosion after Wowhead released some icons they had found through datamining;"Everyone is getting legendaries!!!" Now, it's datamining, so we can't really be certain about anything until there's an announcement or an implementation on the beta.



What we think we know so far

• Datamined icons for a legendary axe, fist, gun, dagger, mace, shield, staff and sword.
• Datamined procs for the hammer, sword and fist.
• Datamined item Breath of the Black Prince
• Wrathion has his own faction; The Black Prince. Datamining shows Wrathion giving five quests. It seems certain levels of reputation is needed to carry on with the quest chain.
• There are 3 datamined items that are required for the quests he offer: Sigil of Power (10 required), Sigil of Wisdom (10 required) and Chimera of Fear.
• It seems Wrathion's quest continues in patch 5.1.

What we don't know

• What is a sha-touched weapon?
• Can anyone that's level 90 start the first quest with Wrathion?
• Can anyone start building reputation with The Black Prince?
• Will the required drops be individual drops?
  Like Crystalline Geode and Elementium-Coated Geode
• Or will they be raid drops?
• What will the drop rate of these items be?

What we know about "old" Legendaries

• Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker from Molten Core
  Two rare drops required (4 and 5 % drop chance) and quest chain with rare and expensive mats.
• Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros from Molten Core
  One rare drop required (4 % drop chance) and some rare and expensive mats.
• Warglaive of Azzinoth and Warglaive of Azzinoth from Black Temple
  6 and 5 % drop chance from Illidan
• Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury from Sunwell Plateau
  The most beautiful weapon in the game has a 7 % drop chance from Kil'Jaeden.
• Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings from Ulduar 25
  Bosses in Ulduar 25 would sometimes drop legendary fragments. Drop rate pretty low on normal, somewhat higher in heroic mode. When a person had 30 of these, they could combine them and start a quest. After killing Yogg Saron, they would get the hammer.
• Shadowmourne from Icecrown Citadel 25
  All warriors, paladins and death knights could start the first quest, which required 25 expensive mats and items from two of the bosses (expensive). Then you needed to kill x of mobs and bosses in ICC (time-consuming).Then you had to kill three of the bosses in a certain way (difficult). Then more gathering (time-consuming).
• Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest from Firelands
  First quest could be started by any caster class (druid, priest, shaman, warlock, mage). There was some expensive mats required, epic solo questing, and three or four stages of gathering in the raid. Bosses would drop all the types of required items, so several people could work on this at the same time. For our 10 man guild it took us nearly 6 months to complete one.
• Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages and Golad, Twilight of Aspects from Dragon Soul
  Expensive mats, epic solo questing, and several stages of gathering in the raid. The gathering items would stay the same throughout the chain, so you could only have one rogue working on this at a time. It took our 10 man guild 3 months to complete these.

Summary

Rare drops, time investment, expensive mats and difficult raid bosses.

Combine this with Blizzard stating two things: They don't want people to stand in queue to get their legendary; they don't want it to be planned and expected by anyone to get one. And they want it to be so rare, that you're lucky if your guild sees 1, if not 2. This makes me fairly certain that the whole "everyone is getting legendaries" is not going to happen.

Questions, ideas and speculations (words in random order really)

What if existing legendaries are sha-touched weapons?
What if you already have to have a legendary in your possession to pick up the first quest?

What if you have to finish all raids from Vanilla to Cataclysm to start the quest chain?

Will there be something dropping that makes you able to start the quest chain?
If it's an early raid drop, we will have to choose among the people that are present in the raid at the time.
If it's a late raid drop, we will have to choose among the people that are present in the raid, and that are furthest ahead.

My guess is that if you want this legendary you will have to finish tier 1 and tier 2 in normal. Perhaps even tier 3 (and 4 if there is one). You will have to cash out. You will have to spend quite a lot of time. And you will be depending on luck. I think it's gonna be an individual quest chain, where your own pure luck and skill is the only thing that matters. No raid wide drops and no guild drama. :)

What do you think?