In an indie game, what you say could make sense.
In a game with potentially millions of players, there really needs to be a trading post or auction house type system to minimize barriers to trading. If I need a certain mat to craft an item, I don't want to have to spam global chat for hours just to find a seller.
I can understand how some can prefer the convenience of the auction house, no argument here whether we get one or not, I'd just prefer otherwise.
Though I do believe that with millions of players online (due to the megaserver, we will have thousands of players online at all times of the day.) I don't see finding mats being an issue, or at the very least, finding someone who will go out into the world to get the mat for you.
I'm sure the players would find their own "outpost" type place for trading among the world though, A lot of things develop into amazing systems when left in the players hands, so I think it would be interesting enough.
I did hear from one of the press interviews the other day that auction houses will be in the game, which makes sense since ZOS did say that players can if you want focus on crafting if they so chose.
I would like to see if a sort of localised auction house would be suitable, localised to a certain area such as that region, or county/hold. Could be interesting..
That would be interesting, It would give players another reason to travel and see the world, I think that would be a good early solution for a problem WoW ran into, they wanted to get people out exploring the world more so their devs weren't wasting time designing landscape that no1 would ever use or see, so with localized auction housing, players would have to travel to each post to see what is on each auction house, keeping people from sitting in one place all day long trying to play the auctions.