Im pretty sure that it is due to the fact that the view (as a general rule) doesn't retain the data and has to go get it everytime a request is made. With that said you can do SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT and that will give you ALL the data.
I think it is just a sanity check by the SQL teams to ensure that the data pulled back will be in the proper order for what you want by making you explicitly state how much data do you want and THEN sort it.
Again, I could be completely wrong it just makes sense to me this way