EU in terms of population is a dead server, but they have more items than naia and chronos combined. Go look at their AH/Shops, then go look at Naia/Chronos.
The problem is what's been identified 100 times. There's 3 tiers of players. Farmers (that can be endgame players) that spend 0 on ncoin and buy everything with adena. Mid-Tier players pumping real money into the game, hoping to one day get to Tier1 (ie no longer having to pump real money into the game and be self sufficient with the adena they farm ingame) and F2P players that are irrelevant.
NCSoft's inability to attract new players to this game (because that's the "natural" progression, you start, you pay your "dues" you move up) means they need Tier2 players to remain Tier2 players, so they keep pumping money in. They are the only source of income for this game. Hence the joke enchant rates, the "here's another chance to do the same thing with terrible odds" events, those are just ways to keep people stagnant and spending. As is NCWest's obsessive refusal to add the coin store items etc. Obviously the downside to that strategy is people get frustrated and just quit. Case in point, a friend said funk it I will participate in the cloak event, against my advice. Bought 60 enchants, ended up with a +3 cloak. Deleted the character, with the cloak, uninstalled the game and moved on. Because effectively, "playing" this game is basically you betting against the casino, at odds the casino sets and doesn't divulge.
And no, it's not "The same everywhere". In the EU cloaks where only just offered this summer. But now you can buy/enchant them at your own pace, cloaks and enchants are in the coin shop. Over here you kinda know there's gonna be 2 cloak events every year, so when one comes around you gotta break the bank to get what you want, else you gotta wait 6 months. And if you got a +15 you don't get the stable scrolls to progress further, so either risk going back down to single digits, or just stay where you are. It's just a sketchy way (scarcity) to force players to spend. Instead of cloaks, replace with jewels, artifacts etc.