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Assuming we avoid NLP and restrict ourselves to killing, questing, and exploring, there is no reason mobs cannot learn. Especially if you grant them a collective knowledge base (though that may not be a good idea, depending).
Perhaps some muds rely on communication, but unspoken aspects seem dominant on hack'n'slash-ish muds, in my experience. Similarly to when I play a first-person shooter, say Natural Selection, I don't lay down hours of discourse to breach a room... When we go in, we each know which way to point, where the shotgun should be, where the hmg should be, etc... In fact, commander's can (and routinely do, given one of our comms doesn't have a mike) rely almost entirely on waypoints (which show up on your hud) without mentioning a word.
Well, I'd apply the same to muds, at least in terms of grouping, killing, and so forth. Imagine a mud in which say, tell, ooc, etc were all disabled. If you grouped up and went xping, I imagine that the mobs would do perfectly well. You could use pointing to distinguish targets, and when attacking, hope that everyone can reason through where they should be... Clerics healing, tanks tanking, etc... There are more than a few players out there (in fact, dominant on some muds) that talk little to none, but take full advantage of the multiplayer aspect.
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