You can already do this, I've done my own quest chains. Other than more kumi there's not really anything you can't do that's why his initial suggestion is so odd to me. You can make npc you can make your own story you can literally do what you want in the nw already.I always saw it as the Landmarks were like small areas with only one city in them where everyonr gathers so it makes sense that when you enter a landmark there is only one place where everyone gathers/is.
Outside of that, theyre NPCs, theyre not meant to be anything important, outside of uses for a narrative.
Things can be different with Bosses or major character NPCs but that would mean Drackos and Howard managing them and controlling them. Given that Drackos is already doing a majority of that with the story so far, it would be hard to expect him to add more NPCs or characters to his workload without removing the time for him to actually rp on his character as well.
I understand what Rucken is saying im a sense that right now Story seems to be what ever you want to make up, instead of being a linear my character has these quests.
Id like to make a suggestion of introducing quest chains. The idea being that you follow a specific set of story board elements that are tied to a particular npc/faction, which are set by the NPC. I know we have the specific Story arc elements, but even just doing them on your own doesnt feel any different to regular elements outside of an extra reward. Because you could write about those elements at anytime even without the current arc. Say you set a quest chain of 10 quests, that start at D rank and end up at S rank. To give incentive to do these, you can add an extra reward, whether its extra kumi (only something reasonable like an extra 10-15% or perhaps an artifact once theyre updated). Not for every mission but you could add the rewards at the end of the quest chain or even half way through so you do 2 D ranks then 2 C ranks then 2 Branks and the 2nd B rank gives 150 extra kumi. Then you do 2 A ranks and 2 S ranks, and the last mission gives 2k kumi or maybe 1500 and an A or S rank artifact.
I think this would help drive a narrative or story a bit better for players rather than "here are a bunch of story elements you can write about" making it feel a bit overwhelming or underwhelming depending on your perspective. On top of this, these Quest chains can also help feel like youre involved in the world a bit more as well. Again while I sympathize and understand taking the role of NW mod it lots of tough work, especially if you added in more NPCs to use, I think adding in a few more other than the bad guys could be beneficial.
Edit: I will say with the lriginal draft of the NW i loved the idea of having the independant Factions, the 3 that were originally going to be in.
Asking for more systems, more mod work, more kumi, I'm not sure that's the way to go, not when you can take initiative and do this yourself.