Actually we used to frequently have items that always dropped, and they then led to quests to build eventual legendaries. This whole ‘random rare’ drop stuff isn’t the norm. BLP wasn’t needed in the past because the difficulty was in the quest chain, not the initial starter.
I mean, no one would still be handing out ‘free’ legendaries this way, just the quest starter, and even then it’s at the cost of some other 2 bullion item (at least delayed).
Given that it IS an eventual drop, this makes it even more petty to just force folks to “go do it”. It’s last season’s item, for heaven’s sake.