Actually in WoW or Aion you didn't rely on the AH for gear. You killed "always" up rare mobs, did quests, crafted all your gear you rarely had to BUY it. Only people who did infact BUY stuff are the ones who had money, and wanted the extra special shirt items or high end bags. Aion same thing you get 99% of your gear from quests. ffxi was the only mmo i played were players relied on the AH to get gear. And it was still a 50/50 chance of said gear from being up. When I was forced to quit ffxi gear from lvl50 down was nearly non existant on the AH. any one of them. Also I bought stuff via the MW and so far it takes me no more then 5 min to buy 7 items. Pretty much MW / ffxi AH are the same minus the walking. But the walking = the time it takes to place a bid and see if it goes through. Sometimes it can take 10 min to buy something on ffxi AH cuz of a too low bid. (and this was starting at last bought price or most used)
So really wtf is the issue? the ffxi AH was no more or less convient then the MW we got