Dueling is a staple feature of any AAA MMO. It is a must have for this game.
Why
--Dueling allows players to experiment and learn to fight in a lower stress environment. Many players new to PvP may be intimidated by jumping right into Cyrodiil. Dueling serves as a form of "training."
--Dueling enables additional community events like tournaments between or within guilds. This sort of community driven gameplay is the life's blood of an MMO because, unlike developer created content (quests and dungeons) it doesn't run out.
--Dueling promotes additional roleplaying opportunities. Without a system to fight friendly players, how are role players supposed to act out their rivalries? Chat-box fighting simply doesn't cut it. And there's nothing like fighting your rival at the top of a fiery volcano or in the pits of a Black Marsh swamp.
--Dueling enables build testing and better theory crafting. While not all builds are going to be built for a 1 on 1 fight, at minimum duels enable you to test out numbers in controlled environment.
--Dueling can be a ton of fun. 1v1 fights really highlight the combat of this game well. Unfortunately, 1 on 1 fights, especially the fair kind, are very rare. In Cyrodiil one person will almost always get the jump on the other.
--Because people expect it in a "good" MMO.
Caveats
There are essentially 3 arguments used against adding a dueling system, the first of which is the strongest (but also quite easily solved.)
People spam me with duel requests: The developers can include an auto-ignore duel requests toggle that makes this a non issue.
I find it distracting: While this argument seems odd (since there are literally thousands of distracting things that players will already do) it also easily solved. There's two ways. First, disable dueling in certain areas (such as in cities or at least inside buildings.) Second, add an option on the megaserver survey so that people who don't like dueling don't get placed in phases with people who do. You'll never even know its there.
People whine about class imbalances. People do this anyway. Again, this argument isn't very compelling. The complaints will come from dungeons, Cyrodiil PvP, questing, and everything else. ZOS has an experienced team of MMO developers who know how to ignore unjust calls for the nerf bat and understand that not all skills are built to be equally viable 1 on 1.
When
As soon as possible. It might be too late for launch, but this should be a top priority for the first update to the game after release.
What do you think?