1) If they are rewardless, they will mostly serve as e-peen stroking/ bother people.
2) No, players really can't balance most match-ups themselves without handicapping their opponent or themselves. "Make your attacks not interrupt my casting." "No healing yourself with spells because I don't have those." No really, I want to know what "balancing themselves" entails.
3) That's almost like releasing face-roll end-game content and telling the players to find ways to gimp themselves so that it's challenging.
4) Some people will take duels seriously and refuse to gimp themselves for balance. Or better yet, "cheat" (which is subjective).
And then it becomes more cumbersome than I'm willing to bet the devs care to do. There will be of course people who don't want to 1 v 1 for their own personal reasons, not just poor unfortunate souls who liked the PvP sets. There's also a lot of people simply win-trading in WD for the challenge log.
That still leaves much ambiguity on the GM's part if you foresee it being a form of harassment like a trade-block. "I just wanted to duel him." Harassment for me being more along the lines of personal vendettas or public slandering. True, we already have this, but why add more?
And yes, I'm aware of the Black list, but I'm under the influence that it's there solely as our one RMT deterrent. /sarcasm.
