"If people want to fly over content, I just don't see how that hurts anyone. I mean, they're going to have to land and quest at some point if they want to make it to 80, so the "no fly until 77" rule seems artificial and arbitrary."

Sigh.

Look, the /real/ reason Blizzard is grounding players until 77 is because they want to slow the leveling process. If people could use their epic fliers from day one of release, people would level faster because they could travel more quickly between quest hubs, destinations, mob spawn points, and so forth.

Blizzard does not want people to level /too/ quickly because WotLK won't be complete at launch. As with Burning Crade, all the end-game raids most likely will not be implemented, and other content may be missing as well, because the thought process is, "Well, from release until at least half our player base dings 80, we have X number of weeks (or months), so we can implement X Raid Dungeon or Y Daily Quest Hub at that point."

So the 77 fly cap is a way of ensuring that most players do not reach 80 too quickly, thereby requiring Blizzard to speed up its timetable to release end-game content.

Sorry to be so flippant with this reply, it just drives me crazy that people genuinely think that Blizzard is concerned about us "skipping content" or "not experience their hard work." While some game designers at Blizzard may be concerned about players skipping content, I can damn well guarantee that the overriding reason for the 77 sky cap is to preserve their content implementation timetable.