@AuldWolf

I think you are making a few to many assumptions.

First you make an assumption on the life and death of an MMO is due to balancing updates when a decent MMO's life is based more off bringing in new content to keep interests and a gradual modification of the game towards casuals since newer players are often play lighter than those who started earlier. Case in point is WoW's simplification of game plays and SWTOR is moving in the same direction.

Second, I think your definition of casual and their interests of incorrect, mostly. In PvE most players that play regularly have some sort of interests in instanced content, dungeons or trials. They also know which classes and such perform better and either what their character to be decent or feel they need to roll a different character to have a strong dps or whatever.

Unless your casual player wants the game on EZ mode, not concerned with building skill or has no interests in doing well then your assessment is wrong.

I've seen many players that were very casual by the most extreme definition rise to the situation when they started playing with a regular group. Casual is merely a player who has yet to discover what is possible.

All players have an interest in seeing more of the game and enjoy more of it. Balance patches merely attempt to keep some sort of closeness between differnt classes and stam vs magika.