The Market Ward is the better alternative then Auction House as long as players bot the purchases of any and all desired materials posted under a certain price threshold. How quickly do people forget the line of naked mithras glued to the counters of the Ru'lude Garden auction house 24/7. I enjoy the fact that I have a chance to purchase something from someone undercutting the market value and not be forced to buy everything I need above a certain price because the cheaper posts have all been automatically bought. I am not aware of any script or bot that can enter the wards and walk to a retainer and purchase a selected desired item at any price in an acceptable range and continue to do so endlessly. A few more market ward improvements could set a good trend for the future of item transactions systems in online games.

The addition of an auction house in the games current state would be disastrous. No STF and the difficulty of proving an auction house bot mule over a regular away player standing near the counter is incredibly hard. When a GM says hi, an iphone will say hi back. Crafting is huge in 14 and certain materials will always be highly desirable and players will surely bot to acquire as much as possible. The current majority of materials and shards are already supplied through battle/gather/craft bots and adding an auction house is just giving them a system for instant item to gil transactions.

Any suggestions of adding an auction house like feature to the market ward outside of a convenient but stationary purchase system through bidding would probably be great. But I will be always be happy to walk to that nicely under priced item over being lazy and letting bots claim all the cheap valuables. It only takes one auction house bot to ruin an entire server.