Thanks, I remember a few periods of inflation fluctuation, but couldn't recall exactly what happened around that timeframe. I wish there was more AH data going back that far, it'd be interesting to see fluctuations in the market especially correlated to actions taken by SE (e.g. the great R/Ex change).
I do wonder if there was anniversary content planned for the 20th that they just abandoned. They did hype it so so much.
They did have content planned, it's what they delivered: TVR, Sortie, Primes, Empyrean+3, and (to a lesser extent) v25.
I think people expected something epic on the anniversary day itself, but they said they saw it as a year-round sort of thing and most of that content came out in the year that followed. They did announce primes on the date IIRC as well as Sortie.
IMO the community hyped the anniversary date up more than they did, people expected a bunch of unreasonable and/or infeasible things that just weren't going to happen. In SE/devs minds, the things above are great accomplishments (and tbf with their limited resources, they may be), but they should have tempered expectations a bit ahead of time. This is another example of how I think they are disconnected from the NA fanbase, people were expecting client enhancements, expansions, jobs, and a bunch of huge things, so people were disappointed when they ultimately got what they got. This outcome was obvious to anyone who was watching Reddit in particular.
In their mind, all the events/livestreams/etc and announcements were a big deal, but it was miniscule compared to what people thought they were going to do. It doesn't help that the events and such were all in Japanese and in awful times for NA players, but I also doubt most NA players gave two shits about them.
It's also not a tiny victory that they have kept this going for 20 years. I know it's not what most wanted, but if you put yourself in their shoes, running a MMO for 20 years is an accomplishment in itself.