I thought this was a bug, a lot of us were submitting bug reports on it. Glad it is an actual debuff - it was not awarding rep or stygia the last week or so on beta. Glad our bug reports didn't go un-noticed!
For everyone arguing against this restriction: THIS is what you sound like.
Reactions to this have been pretty telling. Some act like the whole launch is ruined, because they are not able to get that sweet, sweet 1 reset edge on the starting grind. I assume this is the under 2% hard core population speaking. As a representative of the other 98%, I could not care less, if you get an edge or not, but on a broader note, making the playing field level for those "First of x" races could not be considered "unjust" except by those who really felt like they needed or somehow "deserved" that edge."But I want to play the game how I want and blizzard won't let me" - this is a problem only affecting the raiding world first community and maybe some other speed leveling/grinding people. You have the mindset of "if something is doable to be 0,01% better, then we should do it". If for whatever reason others are not able to do it due to launch scheduling, then blizzard is entirely within their rights to either move the launch (pls, no agane), or change some parameter so that it ONLY affects that small portion of the playerbase. I'm glad they picked the latter option, because another rescheduling would have some actual real life ramifications. Last delay already cost some people scheduled vacation days reserved for playing. No need to fall into the same trap again.
You can farm stygia in the maw. This debuff is not live