It's real for sure. Some people may underrestimate it, because they have no direct experience and tend to be rebels and believe to opposite opinion than government has...
I would choose 5x rate. Not so slow and not so fast.
But more important is to set drop rates.
I think better is to keep some top items rare, overenchanting rare to keep people interested to develop chars...
From 5 to 10 is best imo. But drop rate around 3 to not get farmed so fast. Best settings are to reach level fast and farm slowly, it will trigger lot of pvp for top spots...