Guild Wars 2

So I was reading a GW2 reddit thread and some comments stated that they balance spvp separately from wvw/pve. I seem to recall a developer stating that they do not want us to get used to a certain play-style, say in spvp only for us to have to throw that knowledge out if we want to play wvw, though I could be mistaken. So when they do balance changes are they the same for pve, wvw, and spvp or are some different than others?

Does anyone know? Apparently some skills do twice as much damage in wvw compared to spvp. Is this true??