I actually think Rigwyn has made an excellent point, although I don't much appreciate the perspective of players not mattering. Wipes should be done regularly, as updates should. If instead of lumping so many massive changes into one update every year or so or whatever, update every couple of months (doesn't the website say to expect this somewhere?) fixing only a couple of issues, big or small, and wipe with each update. If different metrics are put in place making it (possibly too) easy to level stats/skills, it would allow players to test higher levels and lower levels within a couple of months and then they can use that knowledge for the next couple of months when they make a new character. This would make it necessary to inform players of what specific changes have been made and what kinds of things they should be keeping an eye on for the two months of that character's life and, I imagine, would significantly improve development by focusing more on one issue at a time per department. I feel that many of the players who are against a wipe feel so strongly about it because there has been so much time between wipes and this causes them to feel a greater sense of loss when a wipe finally does happen; more frequent updates/wipes would, I hope, cause them to feel a greater sense of gain, in terms of game knowledge. Right now, our knowledge of the game makes us realize that a wipe will mean so many more hours of grind to get back to where we want to be. This is why I think the metrics need to be majorly softened in these testing stages we are going through, so people will not feel apprehensive about starting over again. As for balancing leveling, it seems this should be more of a "final project" before the 1.0 release, since the mechanics of the game clearly need plenty of attention still.
I guess I should try to sum this up before it just becomes a blob of text. There are two main points I feel need reiteration:
1. More frequent and SMALLER updates
2. More frequent wipes accompanied by specific information about the goals of the accompanying update
These two things would make me fully support wiping now and in the future. I really hope that it's possible to implement this kind of change in how things are done, but I don't know enough about game development to know if I'm being shortsighted or not, so please tell me if there is some problem with this model that I don't see.