I've been noticing this particular aspect in this forum since I joined in February of this year. Many legendary members do not receive more merits than lower rank members, in my opinion. This led me to believe that they had attained the highest rank and didn't require merit to move up. They can contribute whenever they want or not, and even provide detailed answers to questions that deserve to be answered. They only comment when they feel it is necessary and add to their post count, which is especially important for signature campaigns.
Some Legendary members are classic shitposters who reached that rank in the system without merits, and some do not have paid signatures and are not very active on the forum. Therefore, it is easy to conclude that we can classify them into several categories, and those who are the most active, certainly according to the data already presented, are not those who have not been awarded with enough merits.
What I’m curious about is that only a few legendary guys are always active in the forum and providing lasting solutions to questions posed in the forum. Others that are active only post to complete their signature posts. Does that imply that after getting to legendary rank, making posts or comments to be merited is not necessary again? Kudos to those legendary guys that are always active and provide solutions to questions even when they’re not on any campaign. They’re amongst the real heroes here.
This forum is still (mostly) visited by people who have lives in the real world, and it is foolish to expect that everyone can be active all the time. Maybe you will understand some things if you ever get to the stage where you can say that you have been active on the forum for at least 5+ years and regardless of ranks, merits and signature campaigns, you will be able to be active every day.
Many people used to come here to shitpost before the merit system was implemented. Merits were airdropped for users back then; is this why they don't understand the value of being a legendary because they didn't earn it through their knowledge contributions to the forum, but rather by simply posting whatever they wanted?
Value to be Legendary? The members you are talking about never cared about the forum or the rank, but only about the profit they can make. It is true that reaching the Legendary rank in the new system has a much greater weight and is therefore more valued, and those who managed to collect 1000 merits in an honest way in that system proved that airdropped merits on them are not an unfair reward for the time they spent on the forum years before that.