by Jeff Woleslagle on Nov 25, 2016
Game Director Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas chimed in on a thread speculating on legendary item droprates. These droprates had already been increased once in patch 7.1, but the "bad luck protection" that increased droprates for players that had seen less than 4 legendaries drop had the unintended effect of a softcap for especially avid players:
What we genuinely did not anticipate was just how much some of the very most dedicated players would play, mainly in pursuit of Artifact Power. By mid-November, we started to hear questions about whether there was some sort of 4-legendary limit, and we realized that there existed a group of players that had done so much content that they actually had an expected legendary count of around 4. They hadn't needed to be unusually lucky to get there. (Note that this is a very small group. They're overrepresented in these discussions, because this issue concerns them, but we're talking about hundreds of people out of millions.)
Watcher explained that as of now, bad luck protection would be extended indefinitely:
So we removed that soft cap just over a week ago. "Bad luck protection" now applies indefinitely. Most of the players in this category have probably been focusing on Mythic Trial of Valor for the past week, and since wiping repeatedly to raid bosses during progress sadly can't award legendaries, they haven't had a chance to see the effects of the change just yet.
Read this interesting post in its entirety at the WoW official forums.