Market Wards vs AH

[Abriael]

Impulse purchases are not excluded from an AH they can be browsed just like a retainers little list can be browsed.

Not really. "browsing" is a very different kind of action from just walking around a shop, and seeing stuff worn by mannequins. "browsing" is an active search effort, and to "browse" you have to stray from what you're initially searching.

This is not what impulse purchases are.

When you walk into the market ward, with your search already done and displayed, and you randomly see that nice piece of armor worn by a retainer and pick it up because it happens to tickle your fancy. That's an impulse purchase.

So what you are saying is that they should morph the Market Ward system, so far away from a Market ward that its no longer a Market Ward?

If you want to really work on gaming development, you need to think a tad more out of the box. Who cares if it revolutions the system and turns it in something different? The key point is that, instead of scrapping a whole system that you already have in place and forcing yourself to develop a completely new system using resources that quite obviously, at the moment, are needed elsewhere. You just evolve on one system using much less resources and freeing them up for improving other aspects of the game that need more and urgent work.
The evolved system includes both the features of market wards (eyecandy, windows shopping, more personal approach to shopping) and of an AH, everyone wins. Only close-minded people will care about the system's name.

In any case they are NOT going to scrap the retainer system, they made that clear in quite a few occasions. The best (from your point of view) you're gonna get is that they keep the market wards (not really improving it, because having an AH gives them an excuse not to) and put an AH on it's side, fragmenting the economy further, with people selling stuff in the AH and people selling stuff in the wards (exactly like, in FFXI, people sold stuff in the AH and others sold it in their personal bazaar). Evolving the market wards including functions from a regular AH would keep the economy unified in one place, giving everyone the best of both worlds without having to go check both features to try and find the best prices, which is extremely cumbersome.

Good feature, would improve wards without creating additional problems.

All in all, you sort of solved one problem, which is overcrowding, but introduced 2 new problems and exacerbated an already existing problem (that you offered no solutions to).

Not really. Try using solution 3 in tandem with solution 2. Solution 2 may indeed penalyze people selling several different kinds of items, but add solution 3 to it (and that's why I said last but not least, it's the whole key of the issue), and that penalty disappears. If you're talking about taxes, come on, that's a pittance (and centralized search would make taxation difference between wards obsolete anyway).

Out of the hundreds of retainers I've purchased from. I've impulse shopped once and regretted it.

I'm sure you're aware that systems can't be just tailored over you and your habits. I purchase stuff by impulse all the time. And basic statistics say that if one does, there are others around him that do the same. Money isn't exactly in short supply in this game.