Agree with the OP.

First you need to make players want to use the Market System that is the most important thing to building a decent economy, the fact the majority of players NPC a lot of their farmed items is actually detrimental to the economy.

Secondly you need a system in place that normalises values, say a price history that shows the average price covering the last 3 days, the last week, the last month and the last 4 months, this way players can judge for themselves where to price their items.

Thirdly all the market wards should be linked, they should also allow you to port from one to another so that you don't need to travel the distance just to buy an item, or allow you to buy an item from the search counter regardless of where it is.