Not everyone ignored it but unlike nfs it didn't come in the box with the operating system, and you had to pay for it. In addition, AFS provided strong cryptographic authentication and wire privacy which meant that it couldn't be licensed in many countries because the U.S. government did not grant appropriate export licenses.

I often wonder how the world would be different if AFS 3.0 could have been freely distributed world wide in 1989 precluding the need for HTTP to be developed at CERN.