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Had an odd thought when reading this. For a truly complex and effective AI the overhead might be too much for the game engine to employ it without consuming large amounts of resources. However, what if each NPC had a general more simplistic set of responses, but you ran the AI on a seperate networked server and had it log-in to control each NPC that needs complex behaviour, much like the login for a player. This would allow shifting of the resources away from the mud, since you need the object and the local connection, but not the vast database and lookup processes needed to run it. Also, if the AI terminal went down then the NPCs would suddenly get stupid, but it would not take down the entire game in the process. Of course a limited number of logins of this type, each with a set number of assigned NPCs to be controlled through it might be more efficient...
In any case, it might allow for a much large database, more complex processing of responses, etc. Something which I imagine is likely the largest bottle neck in trying to make one half way convincing.
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