playerbase down 25% in 4 months?

[Abriael]

"Yay for hyperbolic terms to try and make it look worse"? I was describing the steps required to purchase an item once you've located it.

"chasing down" -> irrealistic hyperbole to make the process look more difficult than it is. You pop into the ward. The character is already there, clearly marked. It doesn't run away. There's no "chasing"

Whether it's "negligible" or not is completely subjective. The fact remains, it's extra steps required to do something that could otherwise be done with one or two simple menu clicks. Search Item > Select Item > Purchase Item.

You might have miscounted the clicks. With one or two clicks you don't even get to see the item list in all auction houses. Oh my god, there are "extra steps!"
It's negligible because it doesn't add a sizable amount of time to something that takes a minute (and on top of it gives additional functionality that an AH lacks). If a minute buying an item is such a big problem to you, so important that you think that a developer should waste development resources to completely scrap a system that most definitely works to implement a redundant one to save you a few clicks, sorry if i dare to laugh.