First of all i would like to say:
Spiral Knights is an outstanding game, and I understand the problems with adding steam, and the huge amounts of players that it adds.
Secondly:
The Lag is killing the game, someone needs to step up, either Three Rings or Sega and buy the game some better servers. You will need better servers in order to keep the game flowing. Right now its pretty bad, i can barely play somedays without dying. It makes blocking impossible!
Its not my internet either, every i run into complains about lag, i have a 22MBps internet connection.
Also my other suggestion would be to have a menu (like the bug submission, messages, social, etc) that would allow you to swap havens. Yes, I know you can join friends in which haven they are in, but it would be great to be able to swap from a haven to another. That way if you are selling something. But no one is buying, you could swap to a different haven to trade there.
Many Popular games (including Runescape) incorporate features like this, that allow you to switch *worlds*
thanks
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/File:Minimap.png
If you click on the "Haven #" on the mini map you will be given a list of Haven instances in which you can change to.