I found some interesting point in the video. I do wonder how "alive" an MMO world could become if the NPCs had fewer canned responses.
As long as NPC´s are not acting like PC´s and demanding their own time for themselves (e.g. a NPC schedule for everyone and everyone needs at least a few (ingame)hourse of sleep, a time to eat something and an hour of relaxing in a pub) then adding some speechpatterns or transplanted minds of Little Computer People won´t make the world feel more alive.
Very interesting stuff, It would be interesting for 'npc champions/companions' were running around places engaging mobs but would know their limits and back off. Then, any newbies who are around they could assist these npc's and it would effectivley account to companion gameplay where the player feels like they helped the npc champion, but actually the npc champoin helped the player. Maybe they have randomised names skills and backgrounds etc. hell, they could even have their own npc homes they go to etc. Sure it would be nice if all towns were full to the brim with outlanders, but I think perhaps even in the most optimistic scenario, there's still going to be a high number of lots available around Novia, why not have a 100% population simulation? That world of warcraft conversationalist must have a lot of prompt pre loading going on, I watched this the other day too: (the text to voice packs they use sound a bit painful, PM for telling the time sounds way off) turn subtitles on
