@Rownen posted in discord that the reason they discontinued prestige specifically was inflation. Which in theory makes sense. Less adena generated, prices drop.
But in practice it makes no sense cause a) they added a new prestige rune with the weekly pack (just a lot more expensive) and b) they know and we know that people have stockpiles of prestige runes. So all those without stockpiles of prestige will have to basically waste 1-2-3 years waiting for other people's prestige stockpiles to deplete and for prices to drop.
Overall, to me, it just shows they don't play or understand the game. Mid gear - mid level people are royally screwed. I got to 122 with prestige and destiny. That's 4x exp, 3x adena, 3x drops, plus the complementary runes (damage, reuse etc). Plus prestige allowed me to be in perma vitality where it counted. Which is another massive exp boost. A mid gear - mid level character will never ever compete with me, because catching up to me will take years without those boosts. Prices will not drop, prestige rune is still available. So mid gear will never upgrade, unless they give NCWest wads of cash to buy ecoin and sell that. Which IMO is the real reason they discontinued the packs. The inflation thing is just an excuse. They discontinued the packs because if you can't farm ingame you have to buy ecoin, which is awesome for NCWest.
If they cared about inflation prestige rune would not be sold again, period, and stockpiles of prestige would be traded for ecoin with a cuttoff. Say trade your prestige packs to ecoin by 12/31 or lose them. And that's from someone that has over 2 years of prestige stocked.
But overall it's insane they change the "rules of the game" overnight, and pretty much point those that aren't 120+ already to the door. They don't grasp people don't enjoy being disadvantaged in a competitive game.