I'd maintain your skepticism. I think a lot of players have based how they feel NPCs are going to work on their expectations, but no one really knows how they're going to work as they expect, or if difficulty concerns will result in balancing adjustments, and so on. Besides that, there's no ETA for them, and I think that anticipation is fueling a lot of the "magic bullet" sensationalism over NPCs. It's best to just wait to see what TIS does down the line. I think they're doing a good job fixing problems as they arise without the need for NPCs as a cure-all. There's no ETA, but there's a not-an-ETA of Q1/Q2 2015 from the relevant mondoid.