Look guys, this game is just as free to play as Maple Story. Only instead of having to pay money to get the best gear or be able to level at any sort of reasonable speed, instead you just put in some money to play the game a bit more often and make the best stuff. And you can still buy that resource with in-game money. Making it a bit more free to play than that other game I mentioned.

But simple economics explains why energy costs so much. The fewer people who purchase energy, the fewer will sell it. The fewer selling means the less supply is available. With less supply, means that the people selling want to maximize profit. When the only people selling it are selling at high prices, then the people who would buy it have the choice of either paying out of pocket, or paying the price the sellers put. Eventually, prices will hit the point where it's actually more worthwhile to purchase energy with real money than it is to buy it with Crowns. This is where things will equalize. I expect it will be a point where people can't make enough profit by running dungeons to justify paying for the crowns. Meaning either people will stop playing often, and only spend their Mist Energy to make some extra scratch here and there so they can afford the CE to make gear, or people will just buy CE. Prices will fluctuate up and down at that point.

Or, if people want prices to go down, just buy up a bunch of CE and sell it cheap. This will encourage people to sell at lower prices. Of course, some people have to be good Samaritans, who are totally altruistic in nature and aren't out to make the biggest profit they can squeeze. Thank goodness there are lots of people like that, right?