Originally Posted by
arkaledus
You can't balance it because Europeans are not countries where people are expected to work. Way back in WotLK, my guild recruited a priest from the West Coast, she was married to a guy from one of the Nordic countries. They had met in WoW because she played on an EU server from America, and he moved to America to be with her. He was in one of those actual top 1-5 world ranked guilds back in Europe, but stopped all that when he moved to the US. They decided to play casually at WotLK launch, which is how they found themselves in my relatively casual raiding guild at the time. He was a great player, but he also did not work, and in fact him and his wife eventually split up. She said her biggest source of frustration with him was he did not believe in, or accept, the idea that he should have to work to help support his household and he was used to Scandinavia where he was not required to work at all at any point in his life.
It should be no surprise that in a game that rewards "no lifing it", a culture where the government subsidizes people with no disability choosing to forego being productive workers, you will find more top end MMO players than in North America.