OOO has another game that uses a very similar crown/CE system, called Yohoho Puzzle Pirates and it has been around for something like 6 years. I'm afraid that I always played the subscription version of that game, so my recollection of the exchange rate swings on the market isn't something I watched real closely, so take this with a grain of salt.

I seem to recall that the exchange rate swings for school starting/stopping is only around 10-25%, probably much closer to the 10% as there would be a lot of screaming on the YPP forums if the swing was 25%. The change in population levels, however, is more noticeable. IIRC, there is also a bump around xmas, due to kids being home with gift money to burn.

Sadly, the cr<->CE exchange rate on spiral knights is far far less stable than YPP, the results of school starting may well be lost in the noise.

Simple. You can already see less and less people playing (and paying) in SK. And school didn't start yet.
Now, when the school starts, its going to continue. Prices will keep going up.

After a new CE "package" is announced and it has lots of desired bonuses, people might start buying CE for $$. I don't see a reason for CE price to drop before that.

Majority of in-game object buyers aren't grown-ups. Its kids/teenagers with access to their parent's credit card. Older people have better ways to spend money. I'm not saying they don't spend money on SK, I'm saying they get bored with SK quick. Can't blame them, there isn't much unique content. Heck, there isn't much content in general.

Now, I'm not really predicting that CE prices will drop from their current level.

After all the implications and the statement you made prior to the above sentence, you then say "it won't?" No, I'm pretty sure that was the point of your post.

But I am predicting that they won't be as high as they otherwise would have.

That's an unverifiable prediction. There's no way of knowing what a market shift could have possibly been "otherwise" given any number of circumstances great or small.

It might be a drop instead of a rise. Or it might be that they rise, but not as much as they otherwise would have.

And going from what I said before, I could also easily state "it could be a rise instead of a drop, or they might drop a little but not as much as they otherwise would have" about, oh, let's say some update for the game that's coming out.

I know exactly where you're coming from with all this, and I think that you're probably right, but you're trying to do way too much base-covering in the event that you're wrong. If you're going to make a prediction, make one. Right now, you're pretty much saying "well, prices could go either way [which isn't a prediction at all], but if they go up, they probably won't go up as much as they could have [not verifiable or quantitative]."

That's an unverifiable prediction.

Sadly, this is the nature of most economics, in real life or in games like this. There are too many factors and it is too hard to tell how they combine and interact. With the current cr<->CE exchange rate trending up, a 5%-10% downward trend is going to be hard to notice. Quizzical's observations are probably based on Puzzle Pirates, which is much more stable and the prediction is used by various people. (Puzzle Pirates also lets people predict that materials need to make orange clothing will go up around halloween, etc.)

That "popularity" was unstable, and left a huge market shift in its wake. It was a temporary change only.

If you think adding more players to the game is going to change the energy price to a permanently lower level, you're wrong...unless all those new players are buying CE from OOO, in which case you'd be right. But that wouldn't happen. Some players buy, and some sell. Adding more players will change how often it happens, and possibly the proportion of who's doing what, but it's going to add players to both sides of the financial fence.