So I've been up and down the Jeweler's Row in Ul'Dah like ten times now, and my retainer is just GONE. Not there. Kaput. She still says she's there via the retainer list, and there wasn't a problem with the wards between the time I put her in there and now, but she's disappeared.

Between that and the fact that even if she WAS where I left her, it could take me five minutes to find her since the NPCs load sooooo slooooowly, this market system is basically unserviceable. I mean, come on, there's not even any kind of notification when a sale is made! In a game world that includes "linkpearl" cell phones, why can't I chat up my retainer to see how business is going?!

I know a lot of people on these forums have (some really strange) ideas about why an auction house is a bad idea (and frankly I could not disagree any more), but as it stands the market and retainer system is horrible. Come on, Square Enix, MMORPGs are not exactly a new thing anymore and the player economy issue is one that has already been solved many times over. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here, and seeing as you apparently can't even make your haphazard "unique" solution even work correctly I'd suggest you seriously revamp the whole thing.