I think the market wards are just fine though I know there's still a few features missing that would make searching better and we need an option to hide retainers that aren't selling what we're currently searching for.

However I do think an AH and the wards can co-exist with the AH selling more common items and allowing the wards to cater in more specialised sales and purchases. Or the dev team should probably just open up the AH in LL and keep Uldah as the main market ward city as it is currently. Lominsa does seem the type of city that would support an AH whilst Uldah is more of a merchant driven city. I'm not sure what Gridania would be like. Maybe a cross between the two. However having a different system in each city might help to spread the player population out alittle better as they start to decide what suits their needs. And anima costs between cities is cheap so there shouldn't be travel issues.