I've thought about the energy system. Amongst the bad sides to this, is how free players will only be able to play for about 1 hour/day or even less if using the alchemy system.

This has been discussed to great lengths, and I will not go into it much here. So I would advice to go to another thread if you want to read up on the pros and cons this system has.

My suggestion:
Do as Maple Story and make customization of character a thing to put money into. Make pets and sunglasses and all the rest. This includes those shout out things, where a player may address the entire community through a scroll or something like that. You could also add player houses and other non-ingame related skins to buy. I think you get the idea.

Reason:
This could take the pressure off the myst system and maybe even remove the cost of elevators all together if enough people play the game.

note:
If this has been suggested before or is implemented, I advice the mods to remove this thread.