This is my view of the AH.

I would like to have one because you wouldent need to STAY in one city ( Ul'Dah ).
If the AH was like that in 11 it would be just fine.
Bad thing with an AH is RMTs this is where thay make 90% of there gil to sell. We buy items thay save the gil some lazy bastard spends 20$ just for 1~3mil ( no idea what the going rate is ) And the circle is never broken.

But haveing said that if you goto the wards now you can see RMTs all over there. There in the Crystal wards. All the RMTs now are Alch/Fishers/Botonest What thay do is gather fish or bugs and squish them in to crystals and shards. Then people who are crafting non stop go and buy the shards/crystals from the wards. Again never ending Circle. ( if you notice 3 or 4 retainers with the same names like crystalxx , crystalxxx,crystalxxxx...ext)

You will never stop RMTs there is only one true way to stop rmts and that is make , farm , and gather everything yourself. And hope you score the NM before thay do and get the drop . If you dont feed the RMT gil ( buying crystals for example) thay will eventualy go away. Also if anyone is buying FFXIV gil you really are one lazy ass lol . Gil is SOOOOOOO easy to make in the game and mats drop all the time if you craft so there is really no excuse to buy any gil.

Ok Sorry whent off on a rant there lol ( I HATE RMTS )But more or less we could use a AH and use the retainers like we did in 11 .
How did we use retainers in 11 you ask? Well we just parked our arses outside Jeuno and whent to sleep or work came back to see if anything sold. Retainers could be useing like this along with your AFK selling. But retainers are allways there even if you log out. So your AFK selling just not loged in but you could do that also.