God I hate the daily's. Doing those for decent equipment to see the end game content...after I had maxed out my level, killed WoW for me.
Hmm, I shoulda specified a little better.

Forcing people to do dailies = bad
Having the dailies there as an option = good

Now, there's never really a time where you *must* do dailies to get equipment to try endgame content, but if you know your way around the game and/or have some good friends, it is possible (however, not very feasible) to skip said dailies if you hated doing them that much.

The Daily Quest system gave people a muchly-needed way to earn money, experience, and items solo instead of making everything require groups. Before the Daily Quest system was introduced, once you had exhausted the world of quests, there was nothing more you could do solo, no ways of making money beyond farming items/selling on the AH, or just plain aimlessly killing mobs.

There were no ways of gaining equipment, unless you did dungeons (which required groups).

So, the Daily Quest system was a good addition. BUT, they decided that to run dungeons, you must be wearing the stuff gained from it, or close-to, to be effective. That's where they made their mistake, esp with this newer expansion, IMO. They should have made the first few dungeons a little more accessible, for those who didn't feel like doing dailies.