Originally Posted by
Enkidoh
The thing is though, that's what retainers already are - the Market Board is just a streamlined list of retainer bazaars all organized in the one place. It's not an Auction House. The reason SE did it like this is to avoid the problems FFXI had with bazaars and players keeping their characters logged in without being played just to sell things.
Retainers were the answer - a player owned character that specifically was there to handle a bazaar, however in 1.0 they did not work as well as they should as there was no way to search all retainer bazaars in the one place (they physically appeared grouped in a special zone called the Market Ward in 1.0), so all ARR has done is forgone the Market Ward and streamlined retainer bazaars in an easy to access list in the form of the Market Board.
So really, I don't think you will see a return to FFXI style bazaars for this reason.