I understand the frustration of losing that kind of stuff as it happened to me many times in D2. However, think about it from a solo offline perspective. If you got that legendary and it happened to be of no use to you (and there is a good chance of that happening), what value would it have? As a multiplayer game, you can give it to a friend, sell it or trade it for something of value. Even if you're intent on playing solo, there is a great deal of other value to online items that might be effectively totally useless in SP.