@iasenko, I'm curious about the OP: When you say 50 merits to rank up, I assume you are implying 50 merits to 1000; without taking the activity into account?
No, all the accounts in this list are with activity over 775. They might not be a Legendary at the first cycle (some were lucky like oeleo to reach it on the second round) but this is special feeling for most of the people, being here for so long time. My wish was to get those people enjoy the Legendary run based only on activity. They have already achieved enough merit to prove that they deserve to rank up so it's just a little push to enjoy the last trip of the ranking up.
That's all. I wish I was a merit source already, so this thread won't be necessary