playerbase down 25% in 4 months?

[Abriael]

Was with ya up to here...

They're a step closer, but Wards are in no way working like an AH.

An AH doesn't require you to navigate through menus to first find the item, etc... then back out to a main menu, then select the ward, then teleport... then run to the NPC and buy your items. Then run to an invisible "trigger" in the room, select to either exit or to search for a new item, then warp to that floor... etc.

If the wards worked like an AH, you would do all business at a single location, ideally a counter clearly designated as an Auction Counter (or NPC, etc). You wouldn't be interacting with nothing, teleporting from instanced room to instanced room and chasing down NPCs to get the items once you've found them.

Auction House = No extraneous running and teleporting around to purchase an item once you've found it.

MW's are not quite there yet.

The functionality is pretty much the same, with added functions like window shopping and actual visualization of what you're buying on a character.

the time lost by moving into a ward and buying the item (which you already know is the cheapest) from an NPC (that you definitely don't need to "chase down" as it's clearly visible, marked, and rezzes before all the others (but yay for the use of hyperbolic terms to try and make things look worse), is negligible. So yeah, It's basically an AH, and it's laughable to see some screaming bloody murder about it because it's not called "Auction House".