Some people believe that the price of crystal energy (in crowns) should be something other than what is it. Or at the very least, that the price should be fixed, rather than constantly fluctuating. I'd like to explain why they system should be the way it is.
It costs a lot of money to create and maintain an online game that is any good. Three Rings needs to get money somehow, and preferably enough to make a solid profit when they make a game that is good. Many (most?) games end up losing money, so game companies need to make enough money when they have a hit game to more than compensate for the ones that will lose money.
At a high level, Three Rings could have gone with a number of business models. They could have made it a subscription game, for example. But that's not what this post is about. Rather, let's take it as a given that they're going to use the crystal energy business model, and consider only the exchange rate of crystal energy for crowns.
Let's suppose that Three Rings set a fixed price of how many crowns it takes to buy 100 crystal energy. What would happen? The answer is that it depends on the price.
Suppose that they decree that 100 crystal energy is worth 50000 crowns. A lot of players who are inclined to buy crystal energy with crowns rather than real money would say, forget it, that's too expensive, and quit the game. For those who remained, selling a little crystal energy would get you a lot of crowns. The game economy would be flooded with crowns, and a complete mess. Too many crowns chasing too few goods would drive prices of everything else absurdly high. This wouldn't be a good system even for those willing to pay real money. So that's not a good idea.
Now suppose that they decree that 100 crystal energy is worth 1000 crowns. This seems to be more along the lines of what people want, as people mostly say that crystal energy is too expensive, not that it's too cheap. In this case, why would anyone pay real money for crystal energy? Nearly everyone would just play the game to get crowns, and sell the crowns for crystal energy. For players, this might seem to work well.
For Three Rings, it wouldn't work so well. Three Rings doesn't want your crowns. They have access to the database. They could conjure up billions of crowns if they cared to. And then do the same thing again five minutes later, if they managed to spend them that fast. Rather, Three Rings needs real-life money. A system that seems to work well until the company pulls the plug because the game is losing money is not a system that works well.
The way that the system is designed is that crystal energy is only created when someone buys it for real-life money. Thus, the rate at which Three Rings makes money is roughly the rate at which crystal energy is used. This ensures that they do make money, which they have to do in order to run the game.
Thus, Three Rings needs to ensure that crystal energy is only created from real-life money purchases, and crowns are only created from playing the game. That lets them regulate both, to ensure a reasonable amount of crowns in the system, and also that they get paid.
One alternative would be to eliminate trading of crystal energy at all. Everyone would have to buy his own crystal energy in order to use it. Players who want that system can have something equivalent by merely not using the energy trading market. So the energy market surely makes at least some players better off, and none worse off.
Three Rings doesn't particularly care whose money they get. If they get $20 from each of five players, or $100 from one player and nothing from the other four, they get the same money either way. If the other four players can make it worthwhile for the one player to pay their way, Three Rings is fine with that. The crystal energy system is explicitly set up to facilitate that sort of exchange.
Indeed, the system is set up the way it is to try to cut out external gold farmers. A lot of games have gold farmers who will spend a lot of time farming gold, and then selling it for real-life money. People willing to spend more on a game do so, but the game company doesn't get that extra money. The idea of the crystal energy system is for Three Rings to be able to capture that extra money.
It also lets them avoid the common problems from gold farmers. You won't get randomly grouped with gold farmers inclined to cause trouble for you. You won't have them harass you with spam messages referring you to their site. People who do want to buy gold won't have their credt card information stolen, as they only have to give it to Three Rings, not some dodgy web site.
Another alternative would be to not have the built-in energy market, but still allow players to trade it for whatever price they like. But players can do that right now. People typically don't because it creates a hassle. That would also make it harder for people to figure out what crystal energy is worth. It would open people up to getting scammed, because they don't realize what crystal energy is worth. It wouldn't shift prices systematically up or down; it would only make it harder to make the exchange. That makes people worse off, not better.
Suppose that there was a built-in energy market at a fixed price, but trades would only happen when there was both a buyer and a seller. What would happen? Again, it depends on what the fixed price is.
Suppose that the fixed price were 50000 crowns. Lots of players would be looking to sell crystal energy, but few would want to buy it. Those few who wanted to buy it could offer to buy it for 40000 crowns and find plenty of sellers. Or 30000, or whatever. The point is, even for someone willing to pay 50000 crowns for 100 crystal energy, there would be no point in using the official energy market, because they could get the same amount of energy much cheaper by buying directly from another player. People who tried to only sell energy through the official market wouldn't find any buyers, so they'd have to either sell for cheaper off market or not sell at all.
Now suppose that the fixed price were 1000 crowns. Again, lots of players would want to buy crystal energy, but few would want to sell it. Sellers could demand 2000 crowns in trades off of the official market, or 3000, or whatever. People who tried to only buy energy through the official market wouldn't find any sellers, so they'd have to pay more off market or else not buy at all.
In both of these cases, a fixed price on the built-in energy market that isn't the equilibrium price only means that the official market isn't used. It doesn't actually change the price of energy. That would be equivalent to not having an in-game market at all, which above, we said was a bad idea.
Some would respond to this with price controls, by saying not merely that it should only be possible to trade energy using the in-game market, and only at a fixed price. Demagogue politicians do this often in real life, ranging from rent control to minimum wage laws. The results of gluts or shortages are always the same, and disastrous, though they do depend on the particular price.
Suppose that the fixed price is 50000 crowns. In this case, there would be lots of people looking to sell energy, but hardly anyone looking to buy it. People wanting to sell energy mostly couldn't. Having to pay so much doesn't work well for buyers. It doesn't work well for sellers, either, to have a high theoretical price that you can't actually get paid because no one will buy from you.
Suppose that the fixed price is 1000 crowns. Again, there would be lots of people looking to buy energy, but hardly anyone wanting to sell it. People who wanted to buy energy mostly wouldn't be able to find anyone willing to sell it to them. That doesn't work well for sellers, because they get so little for selling energy. It doesn't work well for buyers, either, as a low theoretical price doesn't do you any good if you can't actually buy anything at that price. In both cases, this isn't quite a complete ban on trading crystal energy, but it does bring a lot of the drawbacks of it, with no advantages.
But what if there's a built-in market that sets the price at the market equilibrium? Then it works wonderfully. There are just as many buyers as sellers. People who want to buy energy can do so very easily if they can afford it. Same with people who want to sell it. Rather than standing around spamming for half an hour trying to find a trade partner, it only takes seconds to make the purchase you want.
So why not have the built-in market fix the price at the market equilibrium? Because that equilibrium changes with time. Maybe one day, the number of buyers will match the number of sellers if it's 4000 crowns for 1000 crystal energy. Maybe a month later, it will take 6000 crowns. There isn't any useful economic theory that can say, the equilibrium price should theoretically be such and such. People outside the system trying to guess what the equlibrium price should be and fix it there don't have the proper information. This is one reason why centrally planned economies invariably fail.
Rather, what the built-in energy market does is to use the real buy and sell offers that real players make to find the equilibrium price at which there will be as many buyers as sellers. If it costs more crowns to buy crystal energy one day than it did a week ago, it's not because the market is defective. It's because the equilibrium moved, and the built-in market shifted to find the new equilibrium.
The built-in market in the game doesn't actually create prices. It merely gives people more information to be able to find the right prices. Blaming the energy market for prices you don't like basically amounts to shooting the messenger--and doesn't do anything to alter the message. If you've got a 103 F fever and you take your temperature and the thermometer reports that you have a 103 F fever, it's not the thermometer's fault that you're sick, and breaking the thermometer won't cure you.
This game would flop as a subscription game, just saying. It doesn't have the thing to make you addicted to it like WoW for example.
And Crystal Energy is a abusive system, they should stick with all the best items being Cash shop, release something like 6* or something. All CE does is limit your playtime