World of Warcraft: Europe is more conducive to gold farming

Students at the University of Sheffield reported data that seemed to suggest an inconsistency in Blizzard's enforcement of its opposition to gold selling.

Now, the data is quite outdated, at least in the context of virtual worlds/MMORPG's. I have no idea whether or not the data the authors cited as evidence for their claim is still viable. But the data motiving their conclusion was this:

This means that European gold is 8.33 times cheaper, costing just 12% of the price of the same gold on the US realms.

I need to verify whether this discrepancy is at all current. My guess is that, if anything, the discrepancy in WoW gold prices is larger today.

The USD price per 1000g has decreased rapidly over the past 12 or 13 months, at least in the US. Some of the culprits may include increased wow gold compensation from questing, increased pool of high-level, active players, and an increase in the number of players able to control/monopolize entire markets in their player auction house.

These effects have certainly influenced European WoW gold prices, though its hard to know the extent. In any event, the research conducted over at gamerprice.com attempts to show conclusively that the divergence between US and European World of Warcraft gold prices can be sufficiently accounted for in the context of Blizzard's hyper-enforcement of its anti-gold selling policies in US.

Blizzard is policing its American realms far, far more rigorously than it is policing its European realms. The figures are so very different, that they suggest an extreme imbalance, even extreme negligence on behalf of Blizzard Europe.

This suggests that in America, it’s actually harder for a farmer to produce gold than it naturally would be, because of an active and ongoing purge of these accounts, and indicating rigid standards, and good policing.