I don't understand the focus on AI. We have humans -make use of them. Massively social interactions have continually taken a back seat to everything else for the sake of casualness. Fucking Ultima Online had more massively interactive gameplay than anything EQN will likely have..
AI is not just about NPC's; there are jobs in the world humans would be poor at
becausethey are humans with a knowledge that extends beyond the game world. Project M was hilarious and fun for a few days, but having a group of players be orcs and avoid fighting people actually trying to fight them, so they could run into to town and Allah Ackbar on some crafter? Would get old pretty quick; especially if said orcs had no tangible losses for doing so and the only rational for them behaving that way is because a human in front of the keyboard knew it was just some mob, that he could easily re-spawn. Yes, ideally you want most of the strife to be between players--and in UO, the various Orc PvP guilds were cool. But mobs have their place; especially because if AI was advanced enough the mob would act as IF it were in the world (While a human would clearly be playing from outside of it.). Not to mention it extends to things like how fauna react to player actions, or even changes in things like the pattern of a river. These are concepts that are completely out of the question without a good AI.
Anyway, having a dragon that reacts to you? That alters it's behavior depending on what your group tries to do? Such an AI would eliminate the concept of "how to" videos. Just think about how interesting
thatwould be. AI, essentially, will allow for MORE freedom; since the developers won't have to be concerned with how idiotic scripts can be exploited and so won't have to lock down everything and it's mother just to make sure you do encounter X way. Yes, again, we are decades away from the technology but even just extremely advanced, adaptive scripting; would be a huge change in the very foundation of MMO's.
Long and short, you can "make use" of players all you want; they still aren't a replacement for various aspects that fall under AI purview. AI is such a huge, ubiquitous problem in games today that I think it marches by almost unnoticed. But again, just imagine if a group of mobs was so advanced that depending on your actions, whatever conflict you had with them could have resolutions even
beyondcombat? (IE similar to how players are dealt with.) Really advanced AI opens up more possibilities, I believe, than any other advancement in gaming.