Legendary

Legendary quality is currently the level of item quality in between and. Generally there are very few of these items on any given server. It usually takes multiple end-game raid instance runs to acquire or craft these items. Legendary items are considered the most powerful items available to players. The names of legendary-quality items will appear in orange.

Burning Crusade

 * In The Burning Crusade, the The Twin Blades of Azzinoth drop off of Illidan Stormrage and Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury off of Kil'jaeden instead of a quest reward.

Wrath of the Lich King

 * Blizzard had originally stated that there would be quests for legendary items in Wrath of the Lich King; however, if there wasn't enough time to implement them, they would have to be dropped.
 * Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings is obtained with an Atiesh-like method (drops & quest).
 * Shadowmourne is crafted after a long and arduous quest line, like Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Cataclysm
Blizzard has stated that there will be a legendary staff in Firelands.
 * is crafted after a long quest chain.

Additional notes

 * Nearly all equippable legendary items are weapons. Most other are components used to create these weapons. Two of them are mounts.
 * Equippable items of legendary quality always have one or more attribute bonuses or procs.
 * Equippable items at legendary quality can't be disenchanted by characters with the Enchanting profession.
 * Before The Burning Crusade, all of the legendary items required a complicated and arduous quest line in order to get them.
 * The hexadecimal color code for legendary itemlinks is #ff8000.

Also see

 * List of legendary items