Something that concerns me about ICC is that there is a considerable benefit to having multiple alts on the same server. If you want Shadowmourne, for instance (assuming 3 emblems per ICC boss, 2 per daily heroic, 5 per weekly raid), then by yourself, here's how it breaks down assuming you can clear available content every week and that new content opens up every other week:

First week: 6 from the chain to do the 5-mans for the first time + 5 from weekly + 14 from dailies + 12 from the four available ICC bosses + 2 from Toravon = 39 emblems
Second week: 33 emblems (same as above minus the first six) [total 72]
Third week: 33 emblems from the above + 9 from the newly available bosses = 42 [total 114]
Fourth week: 42 [total 156]
Fifth week: 42 emblems from above + 6 from the newly-available bosses = 48 [total 204]
Sixth week: 48 [total 252]
Seventh week: 48 from above + 6 from the newly-available bosses = 54 [total 306]
Eighth: 54 [total 360]
Ninth: 54 + 3 from Arthas = 57 [total 363]

From then on, the max would be 57 badges per week. Now, Shadowmourne requires 25 Primordial Saronite, which cost 23 EoF apiece. You therefore need 575 Emblems of Frost to "buy" Shadowmourne. Now, assuming you don't buy your t10 gear, that means you will be able to get Shadowmourne solo at the thirteenth week (the fourth week of hardmodes being available) and only by foregoing all other gear. But if you have two alts, the situation changes dramatically:

First week: 117 emblems
Second week: 99 emblems [216]
Third week: 126 [342]
Fourth week: 126 [468]
Fifth week: 144 [612]

This means that, if your guild has ten people who can use Shadowmourne and a raiding core of 30, if you ran two alt groups and used those emblems, you could have every single raid member capable of using it equipped with a Shadow's Edge by the time Arthas is available. Assuming the pieces aren't single-drop (which, admittedly, they probably will be), you could get ten Shadowmournes in very short order. Even if they -are- single drop, you'll nevertheless have a Shadow's Edge for every physical DPSer in your group, and SE is a very powerful weapon by itself.

It is true that this has been an issue to some degree with previous crafting items like Runed/Crusader orbs, but this takes it to a whole new level. It annoys me that, if I want to be competitive, I'm best off levelling a ton of alts and doing a heroic daily on every single one of them. I really hope the quest items are single-drop, at least, otherwise this is going to provide a massive advantage to players with semi-disposable alts.

It's entirely possible to gear up your main while still collecting Primordial Saronite for Shadowmourne. As Cranberry noted, the advantage is in however many alts one has that are heroic-ready.

For example, I have 8 such alts. For each alt that I do the heroic daily on each day, I'll be able to buy approximately 3 Primordial Saronite each month, 24 if I do all 8. The effort involved is insane, but then WoW has always had a significant population who put such efforts into the game regardless.

Let's compare that to someone without alts. Updating Cranberry's math to assume they run both ICC 10 and 25, the fastest they can obtain a similar number of Primordial Saronite is in approximately eight weeks. Thus, I could theoretically run half my alts through the daily heroic each day, and still not only match a single raider's ability to farm Primordial but also gear my main at the same time. Not only that, but I can do it on my own schedule and possibly also make a lot of gold from the daily quest itself.

I don't get why people are turning the Shadowmourne aquisition into a whine about the unfairness of having more alts.
If they cost 5k on AH (I guess that is a fair price), then a rich player with a bank roll of 125000g can buy them as soon as they hit the AH on day one in principle. This is EJ forums, people here are supposed to be insane and have 8 alt to run heroics on.

I don't get it either. If having an alt is such advatagous to get primordial saronite via emblems, then surely there are enough alts on each server who are willing to put these on the AH. 3 primordial saronite per alt a month would net these an income of at least 15K (assuming 5K per saronite here just for the sake of argument). Quite a significant incentive to all those fortune hunters.

And it is btw very unlikely (bordering on the absurd) that the primordial saronite will be the limiting factor in getting the legendary. It just gets you faster to the next steps of the chain. And paying this price just for the iLvL 264 2H Axe (without a chance of getting the legendary) is NOT a bargain as you make it out to be.

Are we sure the drops from Festergut and Rotface are actually quest linked/high drop rate? I've been looking at this questline as a combination of Thunderfury and Val'anyr/Atiesh.

Thunderfury: Collect two rare drop bindings to get to the working stage of the quest.
Atiesh/Val'anyr: Farm for a long time to collect a large number of pieces. (Granted, the C'Thun piece could be more akin to this quest, rather than the Thunderfury analogy.)

Its possible these could just be linked to having the quest like many other quests, but couldn't they also be the gating mechanism to get to the "grinding" part? This allows them to make the 50 shards on the common/semi-common side while regulating the number of weapons coming into the system at the front rather than the backend. It also stops guilds from crafting large numbers of Shadow's Edges with guild funds. If the two "epic" quest items aren't rare at all, there is a very high incentive for a guild to transfer a large amount of gold (which they have access to) to other servers to buy up large numbers of Primordial Saronite.

Yes. Blizzard took away a good amount of randomness and replaced it with grinding. The grinding starts, when the gating is finished and only one person at a time can do it. Obtaining Shadow's Edge is quite easy, though.

The other thing to consider is the motivation behind making them grindy rather than super rare. Part of this is content lifecycle, and the fact that content simply isn't "current" for as long as it used to be, especially ICC, which will be made obsolete in the next major content push, whereas Thunderfury was relevant for a very long time. My vanilla raiding guild, which started MC in summer of 2005 and finished it up somewhere around mid fall or earlier (ballpark--I've slept since then), put together a grand total of two Thunderfuries after clearing at least through Geddon every single week until somewhere around the 2.0 patch. The problem with having rare drops as a gating mechanism is balancing the rarity of the drop. For something like Thunderfury, they could afford to have the Bindings as rare as they were because it wasn't going anywhere any time soon, and guilds who seriously wanted one would put in the effort and keep hammering away at it. If the rarity of drops for Shadowmourne was adjusted to be significantly more forgiving in order to match a projected 5ish month lifecycle (from the time all hard modes are unlocked), then there will be very lucky guilds sporting rather a lot of them by the time Cataclysm hits.

Making it gated by grinding keeps the total number of legendaries under control the same way that rare drops would, while also spreading them more evenly over guilds who are working for them.

I don't foresee them going with the rare drop strategy again as a general rule, but particularly for final legendaries of a given expansion, where bad luck can screw a hard working guild.

Does anyone have a link on the EXACT method to create Shadowmourne? I've been looking and I've seen a lot of rumors and quest text but the exact details I haven't been terribly successful at finding. Or has it not actually been confirmed yet the exact series of steps that are necessary?

It's everywhere, and takes about 5 seconds to find.

1. Obtain friendly with the Ashen Verdict.
2. Obtain Quest from Darion Mograine in Icecrown Citadel
3. Obtain 25x Primordial Saronite, Quest item from Festergut25, Quest item from Rotface25, Arthas' Hammer from Dragonblight.
4. Absorb Mutated Slime from Putricide25.
5. Bathe the Axe in Lana'thel25's Blood Mirror power.
6. Absorb 4 of Sindragosa25's Frost Breath attacks.
7. Collect 50 Shadowfrost Shards from Icecrown25.
8. Feed 1000 Scourge Souls to Shadow's Edge in Icecrown10 or 25.

Shadowmourne.

Which steps are sequential and which are done at the same time? ie after completing step 3, do you receive all quests from 4-8 or do you have to complete each one before receiving the next? Specifically, steps 7 & 8 are the "grindy" ones and starting them sooner rather than later is best.

The wings unlock every 4 weeks, according to the first ICC raiders.