Because that would be silly. All it would create is even more "balance" patches. Again the vast majority of MMOs balance the last tier first and usually don't bother heavily changing the early tiers. Those tiers are after all temporary while the final tier is not.

All you would do is end up fixing (and the idea that an MMO can be permanately balanced is just laughable.) T1 by the time most launch people were at t2, t2 by the time most people were at t3 and so on and so forth. Such a dev cycle has a nasty tendancy to kill games.

Who ever said these balances had to be implimented gradually? Make quick changes during the time that work on the major overhaul is being finalized. Then release a large patch which corrects ALL known balance issues and work from there. Balancing later tiers and saying "screw you" to the lower is definitely a bad way to go about things. Those lower tiers are where players decide if they want to continue playing the game. If the lower teirs are horribly mismatched that may effect a player's subscription.

Name one game that is a sucess that waited months (and more likely years) to come out with a balance patch. For bonus points the patch actually had to work as intended.

Either or your point isn't backed up by much. WoWs early game is horrendous yet somehow there are enough people in that game to form a medium country.

Oh look at that they're obsessed with the endgame.

I honestly cannot think of a single game that was hampered into failure because the early game pvp wasn't balanced. Or even because the early game pve wasn't that fun. I can think of several that died because of the lack of end game things.

WoW was big not because it had good endgame, but because it was the only MMO like it at the time. WoW is a bad example when it comes to today, considering most MMO's these days fail before most of the population ever reaches endgame. And most MMO's PvP isn't based on tier or level. A PvP in games like WoW and WAR are about where you are and if you accidentally flag yourself. The reason there are few complaints about PvP in that respect is probably because most early levels die either by twink or higher levels. That is not the case for STO.

......WoW and WARs pvp are both tier based.

Again your point doesn't make particular sense. WoW being old is a testament to my point. People usually don't sit around for five years if they hate the end game.

Not all of it is tier based in either game. WoW has PvP servers where PvP is open between factions and Warhammer has PvP zones. And people don't usually make it to the endgame if they hate the earlygame. The only reason people even continue playing WoW is because they know it, and they've invested a lot of time into it already. Plus, most of their friends are on it. It isn't about the game being good, but the fact the community is large and people have been playing it for a very long time. WoW does a very poor job these days getting new players. Most of its newer players are there because of a previous reason - friends.

Irrelevant. The other part is has absolutely no comparison in STO

Which is my point. The mechanics are different and because there is no open PvP in STO balancing each tier should be far easier.

That makes very little sense. Have seperate tiers certainly does not make balancing for tiers any easier.

You have yet to answer my question though.

It is hard to say, since most games are balanced BEFORE they are released. But I will mention one: Halo 2.