Well, it's been a while since I've been on here; busy, busy.

I've been thinking about something, considering the continual arguments and balancing acts that have been done over PvP and class balance on both a small and a large scale in WoW, and I've come up with an idea about it that I'd like to bounce off of you guys. Since this is the single largest community of intelligent gamers on the net (with BossaNova coming a close second; what do you expect with the blog that Richard Bartle trolls though?), I thought this might be the best place to get some informed opinions about my theory. It's a bit long, just to warn up front, and I apologize in advance for it.

It seems as though a lot of games have a hard time balancing PvP in their system, when they build the game with an initial emphasis on PvE as the core design. Certainly, it is possible to have both well integrated into the same game, but my postulate is that if a company decides to release an MMO with both PvP and PvE in it's system, it's actually easier and more beneficial in the long run to build the game with a balancing emphasis first on PvP (regardless of whether or not PvE is the primary intended goal). Here's why.

When a game is built with a PvP emphasis in the forefront, all class abilities, talents, what have you, are designed around the idea of pitting each against the other first. Knowing where you want to be with general class archetypes and primary/secondary/tertiary functionality within each class, as well as things like survivability, range, overall anticipated damage output, class counters, gear scaling, healing to damage ratios, etc., becomes a lot easier when you place the measure against each other, instead of a scripted event. Bearing in mind that actual players are generally sneaky bastards, your can devote your primary focus on ensuring that all of the abilities designed function the way you want them to in actual Player vs. Player combat.

Let's look at it from another angle. With a game that has end-game PvE as it's driving emphasis, you, as a designer, are building classes and skills for each to work as a large, communicative whole. Bosses in end game (like WoW, for instance) are large, disproportionately powerful and hale scripted enemies that are so overbalanced when paired against any single player class, the individual player has exactly no chance of winning without the use of exploits. So, you've designed an encounter with 16 million hit points, a huge range, massive amounts of damage that will immediately kill all but one or two playing archetypes, with limitless mana, and a bunch of skewed skills. The trick, then, as a designer, is building a set of skills for each class that, when used properly and in tandem with the other classes (typically in large numbers from 10-40 and up), can allow the concerted whole to defeat said script, with the right strategy. You end up with players that have, singularly, pretty good damage and (for some classes) minimal hit points for surviving the fight.

However, take the players away from the big, awesome, fire-breathing, tail-swiping, freezing, teleporting, enraging, AoE casting, 16 million hit point dragon of destruction and pit them against each other, and you have a bunch of slightly overbalanced god-killers in training exploding each other. That's because the inherent design of the classes and their abilities are not for fighting each other, but for fighting things many orders of magnitude hardier and stronger than themselves. And, because changing anything to allow balance for PvP could alter the PvE encounter with disastrous results, your choices are limited for revision. Adding new abilities is also limited, since any new skills that are meant for PvP could alter the balance for the PvE encounters as well, making them too easy or too hard. Plus, the players really won't stand for continual nerfing and rebalancing for the good of equilibrium; it just pisses them off too much.

Now, you take the same situation with a game that is balanced around PvP, and the problem just bout disappears. You have a set of classes and skills/abilities designed around fighting the other players SPECIFICALLY. That means primary emphasis is on those tricky, sneaky, learning bastards, the players. You can balance it any way you want, including RPS style; the only difference is that you can really make it work without forcing classes into complete co-dependency. You can make all classes truly independent, while still creating a system that balances small and large scale group PvP encounters as well. And the scripted PvE encounters? Those become much easier to balance and design, since you have a ceiling of design to work with in terms of damage, healing needed, abilities and their functionality, DPS required to kill it, and the more abstract strategy (placement, movement, reactions to abilities, DDR dance pattern, etc). This is because the scripted encounter doesn't care if you nerf it. It doesn't whine if you make it's fire breath 50% less powerful, or slow it's movement, or restrict it's line of sight, or have to revise it for clipping and seaming errors. Because it is just a program, you can design it around the players and their abilities, instead of the other way around. So, balancing both PvP and PvE become easier, because the player is taken into account first in both cases, if you design an integrated game with PvP in mind first.

To put it shorter:
It is always easier to balance PvE for a PvP game, than it is to balance PvP for a PvE game.

Well, what do you think?

My personal thoughts have always been that any game that trys to be everything to everyone is destined to fail. If I look at the sucess of WoW, it wasn't built on PvP. More then anything I have always felt WoW suceeded over EQ2 because of its relative ease of play (and VERY basic system requirements).

The trouble with PvP in any RPG style game is that certain classes are (and should be) inherently weak vs others. Unless you streamline such that every class can heal, cast spells, wear plate, have CC... etc..etc.. you will never have a balanced system. If you look at all the sucessful "PvP" games, most are FPS or RTS. In each case, players start out virtually identical. The deciding factor is typically skill. This is a problem in an RPG style game because you want a variety of unique classes, and generally these games are based on PvE content that involves teamwork and group play.

What is Blizzard is trying to do with WoW in a bid for Competitive Gaming acceptance is like trying to nail a loose stool to the wall. They are aiming at a moving target and suceeding in balancing one area (say 2v2) with completely throw off other areas (like 5v5 or world PvP). This doesn't even begin to touch the effects on PvE (look at all the PvE players with PvP weapons).

I'm not saying that WoW can't have PvP.... on the contrary it can be a fun and enjoyable option. But what I would have preferred to see is a separate instance or zone that people can enter which would allow them to choose their spec/gear before the battle. I'm sure some sort of ladder or reward system could be put in place for those who need those sort of things. But the key is to separate the two worlds so that you don't ruin one by making changes to another.

There are plenty of successful multiplayer FPS games which are heavily class-based. Direct comparisons obviously fail, but it's a massive stretch to say that players in TF2 start out "virtually identical".

I don't think we can ever achieve any kind of meaningful PvP balance in WoW, unless you count a paper-rock-scissors system as balance. Any attempts to make all classes somewhat equal will just lead to abilities being made equal too. I am of the opinion that Blizzard would do better if they cultivated the differences of classes and specs and then let the cards fall as they want PvP-wise. PvP players always struck me as more adaptive to rerolling and respeccing due to evolutionary pressure anyway.

The current situation has Blizzard doing more balancing around PvP than PvE. For example they have completely messed up dots for warlocks and shadowpriests despite them already scaling horribly for PvE. They have tried to limit the survivability of restoration druids. They have done a lot of tweaks to hunters and rogues that affect PvP but left them relatively unchanged in PvE. This makes sense too since small changes of the balance in PvE won't break things but small changes in PvP will alter things dramatically.

Others I can think of off the top of my head are Enemy Territory and Call of Duty 4. But, the difference is, with those games you can choose a different class to play as, but that is it. Everyone can eventually unlock everything that every class has to offer. In ET and CoD4, the unlockables purely take time to get, although being a bit skilled helps you get them faster.

This isn't nearly the case with WoW. In PvE, while everyone could get the top end gear, the organization / co-ordination required to pull it off limits the top end from a lot of people. In PvP, everyone can get almost all of the top end gear purely by putting in time, but the mouth breathers can't game the arena ratings nearly as easily as the mouth breathers can game the raiding system.

Like you said, they aren't virtually identical at the outset, at the end, they do become homogenized in the sense that everybody has all the available skills / uipgrades for that class, and all classes are available for anyone. The more deciding factor between balance in an MMO and an FPS / RTS is the time element. A twitch reaction in an FPS can likely save your ass, RTSes measure players APM. Twitching in WoW can't do much in a majority of cases. Yes, it can help in some, when the action is something that is off the GCD, but not nearly to the extent of an FPS.

I disagree. A focus on PvP balancing makes it harder to balance for PvE, and vice versa, assuming the following is proper PvE Balance:

* All classes should be equally desireable for endgame PvE, in close to equal numbers.
* A progression of gear exists that acts as a reward for the players, a way to pace consumption of content, and a mechanism for character development (ie bigger numbers).

A PvE gear progression inherently messes with PvP balance, as seen in pre-TBC days. A number of mechanisms can be introduced to work around this, like the introduction of Resilience. But it's a fact that the existence of powerful gear in PvE neccesitates a parallel gear progression in PvP - which can very easily mess with PvE balance, as PvP design will focus on accesibility of gear, to make any disparity in gear power due to length of time played minimal - ie PvP players will desire a higher focus on skill than on gear accumulated than PvE players will. This is the fact that led to the nasty gear plateau we saw when TBC was released (Tier 5 level loot being worse than dungeon blues in a couple of cases). PvE and PvP gear progression will inevitably mess with each (and of course supplement each other).

A properly balanced PvP metagame does not guarantee the equal desireability of all classes in a PvE setting. PvP has a focus on mobility and longevity that will not always translate into an equal advantage in PvE for those classes who are strong in those areas.

There is a lot to be said about the interplay between PvP and PvE balancing, but to sum up, I think that:

* Balancing primarily for one will lead to mass imbalances in the other.
* Balancing for both will have a tendency to preclude the existence of certain mechanics that could lead to a better gameplay experience in one venue, seen isolated.
* Balancing gear progression for both is close to impossible, as the goals are conflicting. PvP favors accesibility and the ability to rapidly gear up. PvE favors a tiered gear progression, where consumption of content is controlled through a slower access to gear.
* A game which focuses it's balancing on one area will naturally be able to provide a more compelling experience for the players who prefer that area.
* PvP and PvE are very wide categories. Balancing for 2v2 PvP and balancing for 40v40 Battlegrounds is not the same. Balancing for solo play, balancing for 5 man PvE instances and balancing for 25 man raids are not the same.
* Balancing for all available playstyles as found currently in WoW, is an incredbly complex and basically impossible task. Local imbalances will always exist, and it is not possible to change this without watering down the gameplay options to the point where it is a very different game than one we're playing now.

It's also debatable whether it's an MMORPG at all. And it certainly isn't anywhere near WoW in success - from what I've read it certainly isn't a cash cow for NCSoft. I also wouldn't say it has an interesting PvE side - there is basically no real PvE endgame at all. It is also a game with next no end-game character progression, which makes balancing a lot easier. I think it's a very good example of a why a game balanced primarily for PvP will have luckluster PvE.

I think you're underestimating the potential power of a resilience like mechanism. What happends if we push it further?

We know the game checks if the target is a player or not - dimishing returns/durations for PvP versus the same for PvE for CC spells - we know the game can check if you are in combat with a player - healing someone fighting a mob near a guard does nothing, healing someone fighting a player makes the guards eye you - so those aren't really limiting factors. We could, without designing any overly complex additional mechanics, construct gear that gives a nice chunk of, say, crit chance or spellpower, that only gives their intended effects in PvP. Or PvE. While there are stats that would be much harder to transform (stamina or strenght for example) you could, dare I say it, with "relative ease" create a gear separation where PvE/PvE outfits would lead to performance differences of, say, 20-30% (or more) just because of the differing stat tracking.

If you wanted to get really fancy about it, just hike up Resilience and throw in a new stat I'll call "Decisiveness". Distribute Decisiveness to starter PvP gear, add an effect to Resilience along the lines of "Reduces all incoming damage", tweak the numbers appropriately and while the result might not exactly spell perfection, it wouldn't be that hard to reduce the number of balance-upsetting gear crossovers to a much more manageable level than rogues in general and what some of the professional PvPers roll with today in particular.


In addition to that, the aforementioned CC duration check mechanism could be extended to include a myriad of other spells, someone mentioned DoTs, which are an excellent example. If the target is "Player" use one set of damage calculations. If the target is not "Player" use other set.

This is not to say that a separation of PvE and PvP balance would automatically create an Utopia of Gaming, or that it would be easy, but the degree of interconnection in balance decisions seen in WoW is notthe result of an immovable Law of Nature that could not be overturned even if the will and finance existed.

Yes, that is true. Taken to the extreme one could have PvE raid-dropped item unequippable in arenas - and PvP items unequippable in raid instances. This has been done to some extent with consumables in arenas.

However, Blizzard has decided that they want items from one sphere to be useful in the other sphere. But not too useful. And if that is a goal - then a progression of PvE gear forces a progression of gear upon PvP, as the PvE crowd will increase in gear-power over time, and the PvP crowd will want a similar (or higher) powerlevel over time, to not get a pre-TBC situation of raiders rolling over everyone in BGs. And this conflicts with the design goal of accesible PvP, as fresh players will be outgeared by experienced PvP players. If the PvP gear is made readily available to create this accesibility it will mess with PvE balance/progression (as seen by the 10-games-a-week syndrom and people gearing up for PvE by doing Battle Grounds and not 5-man instances). So mixing PvP and PvE will cause imbalances and conflicts of interest. It doesn't mean the overall result cannot be an enjoyable game. But it means that players of both groups will be 'forced' into the sphere at times in order to min/max fully. So the result of a mixed PvP/PvE game is that it will appeal greatly to players who enjoy both aspects - but will have issues for those who want to focus heavily on one style of playing.

Looking at the current WotLK beta it is obvious that PvE/PvP balance is among the most pressing concerns when introducing new gear/abilities. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard's attempt to make world PvP more appealing will factor into this. World PvP is prone to zergs and grinding - it will be very hard to make the Lake Wintergrasp rewards based on anything other than organization/time spent - I assume the most expensive rewards will be vanity rewards for exactly this reason. For instance the Hog is a good candidate for a Lake Wintergrasp reward. Any rewards relevant to "classic" PvP /PvE will either have to be upgraded over time (like seen with arena seasons) or will eventually be rendered useless by item progression, hence making the zone a deserted wasteland (as I do not believe world PvP will very popular without relevant rewards).

I think balancing will never stop, if you emphasize PVP or PVE will not matter, ever.
Every tiny little piece-of-balance (so to speak) that surpasses it´s counter-balance-part by but the slightest margin is bound to overthrow any balance-scale you are trying to achieve.

As a matter of fact, I think you understand the way Blizzard designs their encounters in a wrong way. They give the classes a set number of abilities and talents and only then, after the process of skill-creation, are the encounter-mechanics designed around the tools that the classes were given. Anything else would not make any sense at all. That is the reason why every tank class (paladin, DK) get´s their own taunt skill for example, because old encounter mechanics most often relied on taunt and therefore relied on 2 classes out of 9. Factoring in crushing blows you went with only 1 class left. So the consequence of designing encounters around the skill "taunt" and "shield block" had only one logical consequence: Warrior tanks were mandatory.

People should wake up hoping for a perfect, 100% and complete balance in every aspect of the game to be achieved. It can´t be done. It can only be so much approximated. And we all now Blizzard is the game developer having the most success in approximating this balance (more than the other game developers for sure).

Separating PVE and PVP completely will be counterproductive to the game feeling. WoW would be 2 different games with completely different mechanics (think different cooldowns on certain skills, some skills not usable at all, different resource costs etc.), which is not the "fun to play" philosophy of the Blizzard developers. This idea is taken up by the introduction of resilience to some extent, though (or removing high cooldown skills like former recklessnes or pots from arenas).

Sometimes you just need to lay back and tell yourself: "Ok, I can´t consecutively interrupt this priest from healing him or his allies through my damage, but BoF is a huge help against snaring classes and repentance and HoJ often gives me the needed time to close distance to kiters."
Your weakness is another classes strength and that is someting that is bound to stay (and needs to in my opinion). Creating a toolset of abilities which allows every class to hinder each other from making a move would be the logical consequence of such an endeavor.
That does not say some classes should be able to completely obliterate and/or even more important, take the complete fun out of given classes (Hello mana burn mechanic, why have you ever been invented?).

I tend to disagree. First, it really comes down to what is important in PvE to you. For some it's all about itemization. For others it about skills/talents/builds. Sure, you get a lot of items in WoW. Character progression through itemization is huge. But the playstyle of a character in WoW rarely changes, if at all. On top of this most classes are basically forced to push the same button over and over again (Chain Heal spam, Shadow Bolt spam and so on).

Yes, Guild Wars has not that kind of gear progression that WoW has. From this point of view character progression is limited, indeed. Guild Wars' focus, however, is more on spells/skills/builds. Yet I wouldn't call the PvE lackluster at all.
Actually I feel that it is way more demanding to play a healer in Guild Wars than in WoW due to Guild Wars very fast game mechanics where 1/4 second is normal cast time.

Personally I enjoy playing PvE in Guild Wars. For me it's fun to play a healer because it is demanding. I do not mind that there is no character progression in terms of gear grind. But I understand that other players will miss the option to progress their character through itemization. For them Guild Wars isn't the right game, hands down.

Finally I'd like to add that it will be interesting to see how Mythic's approach in Warhammer will work out. They said that when they develop something in Warhammer they do it with PvP in mind. And they balance their PvE to match the given constraints: instead of balancing player/gear around a mob the mob gets balanced around given classes/abilities/gear.
Furthermore they interwove PvE and PvP content. In order to unlock some PvE content the PvP crowd needs to accomplish certain tasks in PvP. But certain PvP content needs to be unlocked by the PvE crowd, too. Thus PvPlers need PvElers and vice versa.

That is exactly what Blizzard is doing now. They even said as much, when answering why raid content wasn't in the alpha/beta for WotLK yet.

I encourage you to go read up on medieval warfare if you think anything in WoW bears even a mild resemblance to it. A simulation of real warfare is not very well suited to an MMORPG.

EVE Online has a whole bunch of balance problems of it's own, and does not have any endgame PvE content at all last I looked. There is some PvE content but it's extremely limited in scope and complexity.

The answer to balance between PvP and PvE is not to bring your own little design pet peeve, or favorite niche game played by some small fraction of the total MMO playerbase. It is realizing that true balance is unattainable, and the best we can hope for is that they don't let it get too much out of hand, and that one's favorite sphere is the one primarily being balanced around (the pendulum tends to swing a bit back and forth in WoW).

It's much more interesting to point out specific problematic areas than give a sweeping generalization that Blizzard should balance for PvP, because then PvE balance will magically appear out of thin air if they just do something really simple. I'd claim that the success of WoW is primarily due to it's well-designed and well-polished PvE game more than anything else. That they've managed to tack on a somewhat fun PvP side to the game is just a testament to their skill as developers. And of course it's not perfectly balanced. A perfectly balanced game would be very different, and would have much fewer options than we have now.

I wanted to challenge something that Ungeir said in his first post (sorry for the delay in response; I was working off a hangover. Too much fun at pool after I posted).

Your second statement for a driving goal for PvE progression, I think, is flawed, simply because you make the assumption that gear HAS to have an overemphasis as a part of core gaming design. Certainly it is traditional, heralding back so far as the old NES Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, and even back to pen and paper D&D to an extent. It's not the only way though; pre-Kaplan UO had an emphasis on character advancement via skills over gear. Not even stats really: itemization was newly implemented in UO, and changed a lot of things (and since it was new, and the game was not originally designed for gear progression, it drove a lot of people away).

Let me ask you this: Would Illidan have been any less of a challenge if the encounter was scaled in terms of damage from Illidan and Illidan's total health, if it was scaled and designed for say, Tier 4 gear, if all you HAD was Tier 4 gear? It would still be designing an encounter around the best gear available (and therefore, as the at-the-time pinnacle of PvE encounters, required), with the same set bonuses, etc? Or Bloodboil? Or M'uru? Or Kil'Jaedin?

The decision to emphasize gear as a means of character advancement was a core design choice, but it isn't the ONLY choice. I'm not just talking about WoW here; I never was. I'm talking about MMORPGs as a whole. EVE did their system in a different manner, emphasizing time in as a major contributing factor, with player skill advancement as the core design parameter for overall character evolution and advancement. Warhammer, for those that have played it, does a mix of emphasis, dangling a combination of intangible bragging rights for individual players, cumulative faction pride (something that is sorely lacking in WoW), and stat-enhancing gear as a lesser reward as well (stats, while somewhat important, are a much smaller concern than active strategy and comprehension of your class and other classes). Guild Wars does it differently too, as far as I understand (I haven't played it, so I can't comment definitively.

If you take away emphasis on gear as a reward, and offer something else to players as incentive and visual means of progression, does it really become that hard to create a continual set of sidegraded end-game PvE encounters that are just as fun? A lot of people that do PvE are out there for the prestige, the challenge, and the competition between guilds. The gear is the manifestation of that achievement, but can just as easily be done with titles, trophies, auras, glowies on their armor, pets, anything, IF you don't decide on gear as your form of primary progression. I personally find gear advancement to be a terrible form in a PvP game, since it ends up overbalancing skill over a given period of time.

Now, on to desirability of classes. There really are only 4 archetypes in MMORPGs: tanks, healers, melee DPS, and ranged DPS; the difference between non-magical ranged and magic ranged is negligible. They both do the same job, and they generally do it in the same way. If you want to stretch it out, you can include pet classes as a sub-archetype, but I generally don't. If you look at it that way, it's fairly easy to build a 4-way RPS with healers floating in the middle: Tanks smash melee DPS well, but are weak against ranged DPS. Melee DPS eats Ranged DPS, but gets smashed by Tanks. Ranged DPS does well against Tanks, but has problems with Melee DPS. Healers do well against Tanks (in terms of survivability; not necessarily damage or killability), but are susceptible to both Melee AND Ranged DPS. Really, you cna balance healers' foils any way you want: you can make it dependent on healing style: HoTs, AEs, direct heals, buff-intensive, etc. You can make it about their range: frontal combat healer, or rear supportive healer.
Once you decide on how to balance the archetypes FIRST, you can create the skills. Build specializations based on DEPTH instead of BREADTH, but don't let them stray too far, one from the other, WITHIN ARCHETYPE. Then, classes between archetypes become just about interchangeable for PvE, so long as a respec isn't something you have to pull teeth for.

That's a bit of an oversimplification, but it's a ground-level for balance. If you're balancing (essentially) 4 classes, instead of 9 (soon to be 10 in Wrath), it becomes a lot simpler, for both PvE and PvP.

WoW has always tried to be everything to everyone. It has content for all types of players, competitive and casual. It has multiple types of PvE and PvP and rewards for all of those activities. It is also the most successful MMO every made by any measurable standard, and one of the most successful games of all time.

I don't see how anyone could argue that any game trying to do this is destined to fail.

It is easy to balance the PvE encounter based upon the existing (already PvP balanced) classes. So the boss is balanced, and doable. But now you need to balance the classes amongst themselves, inside the raid, in terms of raid worth. The boss may be balanced and killable, but class-X may be pretty damn terrible in a raid environment compared to class-Y.

I'm not saying your whole idea is flawed or anything, but you need to consider the balancing of classes inside the raid "competing" against each other, not just the boss.

Wouldn't a balanced setting between classes for PvP almost have to mirror a balanced setting for the same classes for PvE? You don't need a huge number of classes to create diversity; 4-6 will do the job just fine, with 1-3 spec lines to create any number of unique combinations. Also, if recpeccing for different needs is quick, easy, and available nearly anywhere (given some restriction like an internal timer or a temporary debuff), situational demands can be easily met by any class, at nearly any time. Having fast respeccing also enriches PvP, so that each class can redesign themselves for shifting strategic needs, both for small and large scale PvP. WoW may be the measure for MMOs right now, but it is certainly not the rulebook.

Also, and call me crazy for this, but why does every class have to have a pivotal role for every boss encounter? There's nothing wrong with having a fight that caters to a specific archetype, so long as each archetype gets a boss like that. if anything, it ensures each class will have SOME degree of importance at some time. Just don't do something retarded like making the reward for an archetype specific kill be something that archetype can't use or doesn't want. Razuvius was an excellent example of just that: Priests were PIVOTAL to that fight. It was also, as I recall, a lot of fun, and I don't really think anybody complained about it either.

Now, I understand what you are saying; it's the same problem we're seeing with stacking Destro locks and Resto Shaman (Shaman at all, really) over other classes. I think, maybe, Blizzard got TOO diverse, and is suffering the consequences of simply having too many things to balance against. We didn't really need 9-10 classes, we probably could have been fine with 5-6 broader classes.

I think, perhaps, I'm not talking on the same wavelength as some of the people. A lot of this discussion seems to be directed at the end effects of the current system within WoW; I'm looking at root causes for those effects, and proposing a different end result. Would balancing for PvE be that much of a problem if respecs were freely available, whenever? Or if there were 6 classes instead of 9(10)? Or if there were no hybrid classes? Or no pet classes?

javelin, I agree with you whole-heartily. Especially on your point about gear progression. The current gear progression system in WoW is just another meta level system. The level cap is not 60/70/80. By introducing better and better gear with each new raid instance Blizzard raises the level cap. But for Blizzard it's currently the only way to keep PvE players in the game. Because, frankly, there's nothing else to do besides grinding for better gear. WoW is way too simple to keep PvE players attached to the game.
Guild Wars has a gear cap. Once you've got your level 20 gear, your're done with your gear. What you can do, however, is to get some prestige armor. This armor requires very special reagents that only can be obtained in high level dungeons. And you now what? People farm for it. Months and months. Just for a better look! Because prestige armor has the same stats, just a way cooler look so that everyone can see: wow, this player must have invested a lot of time.
I think that Blizzard really underestimates the desire of players to look cool. I mean how often have you looked at a Netherwing Dragon mount and thought "wow, I want one myself". Is this mount better than any other elite mount? No. But it looks cool.
But back to my point about WoW being too simple. What WoW really lacks, imho, is some kind of complexity. Things in PvE you can do besides facting grind or gear grind/raid. A real eco system/market, for example, would be cool. Housing with a trophy system would be cool. Just image a huge guild with a huge guild hall showing off all the heads of the bosses they have slain.
Sometimes I feel that Blizzard has the foundation but all they care about is quick money. After all they just recycle the same stuff over and over again. More faction grind, more gear grind.

Garak, you've given me a lot to think about. I'm brushing around the edges of a response, but it's too early in the morning for me to be coherent. It's got something to do with prioritization of complexity of balance (PvP will be harder to balance because of the meta game and player adaptability of strategy, whereas PvE encounters never change with the exception of bugged fights), and the possibility of having to balance around a spillover of PvE/PvP encounters (like say, contested world bosses).

Having gimmick fights doesn't take away from the game. Blizzard is actually guilty of it a bit; just looking back at Molten Core, I saw a gimmick Hunter fight (Magmadar and the drop RIGHT BEFORE HIM for Hunters) and Garr (the only CC for learning was Warlock CC).

I'll think about what you said at work; I'll have to copy/paste your reply and email it to myself since I can't access EJ from there.

Perhaps, but doing so strips out a lot of potential PvE options and variety in the name of balance. By focusing on PvP action, in particular 1v1 you're going to have to assure that no class has an ability that causes them to become too strong compared to the other without a specific counter. This leads to sameness amongst classes. Balancing around large-scale PvP encounters is better, but then ends up becoming similar to PvE in many ways. Nearly all the complaints about "lack of balance" in WoW stems from small scale encounters (arena) then the large scale PvE/PvP it was originally designed for. Which begs to question why they made Arena to begin with...

Well the current system is not working I think we can agree on that.

Its a patchwerk (pun intended) of nerfs/buffs, in a endless cycle and complexity. At some point it will reach a state where the amount of new abilities, and the depth of the class complexity will trash pve or pve. (or both)

The game is played by 10+ million people, yet the class balance is arguably focused around 3v3 arenas as admitted by the Devs. That is obscene and the result of the "E-Sport" fad Blizzard is pushing since BC launch.

So you have the question how to balance the 30 specs spread out amongst 10 classes?

Using the same rule set for pvp/pve wont do it as the current situation clearly shows.

Reduction in the number of available classes is a no go either as it would result in a backlash from hell.

The way it could be solved is already there in a different MMO and its reasonably simple to implement. In the game Anarchy Online they solved the above problem by modifying abilities depending the target.

For example "Super Mega Punch" does 100% of its damage against a PvE target, but it does only 75% to PvP targets. This enables a "Double Standard" that is actually flexibile to adjust, yet PvE is not afflicted in any way while PvP can be balanced by setting the given abilitys PvP Damage.

Something that holds an interesting prospect for future balance concerns are glyphs in my opinion.

Think about the 4 Horsemen encounter:
Need additional tanks? Just hand mages a glyph that adds to their fireblast spell an effect like "Works like a taunt vs mob xyz." or [insert random creative encounter design idea]. Also possible, but highly unlikely would be tagging these glyphs with "Only works while in instance ABC".

Similar things can be done to certain skills to gradually adjust them for enhanced pvp/pve performance.

What?

No. That's a very pvp-perspective, where you get the best gear each season without caring about the earlier gear and the only reason you need that best gear is because everyone else has it. If no one else every got S4, there'd be no reason in the world for you to get it (well other than that it allows pvp players to get new gear which helps keep them interested in the game.)

Gear in PvE is another way of providing progression without requiring keys/flagging/attunements. Gear allows them to tune fights harder, and then mitigate that difficulty with gear in the dungeon: making it so you can go longer before nerfing a fight, because the earlier guilds can overcome it with raid stacking or skill (whatever your definition of 'skill' is) and then the later guilds can make it easier because they have more dps, more healing, and more survivability because they've spent more weeks killing the bosses that come before.