Well, now for my own status report: I havent had time to do much, but what i did manage to do:
I've taken Bluerobin's tick-object idea and improved it: Instead of having an object in a location, activating a tick() or whatever verb on certain items listed on a list property, instead, I've made an object that CONTAINS all the locations that need to be ticked, which could be considered an 'area', and it activates the tick verb on ALL objects it contains, and ALL the objects these objects contains, etc... (ofcourse, it checks if each object has a tick verb first, so that we dont have to give empty tick verbs to everything to prevent errors) The huge improvement this system has over Bluerobin's first prototype is that any object that has a tick verb could work in absolutely any functional 'area' or 'realm' or whatever in the final game, without needing to be added to a huge list containing all the objects to be ticked. Same thing for newly created objects, there would be no need to have them added to such a list before they started functioning, they would be functional as long as they are in a game area.
The next step for me will be to implement a basic randomly roaming NPC in my area. Once that is done, i think i'll open it to the public.
EDIT: SUCCESS! I now have a crazy NPC running around randomly in my small dungeon every 5 seconds (which is the current length of a tick). Now i'll have to add some more randomness to the NPC movement so that there is, like, 1/10 chance of the NPC moving every tick, and maybe have it do some random action/announcement every once in a while, just for flavor.
EDITEDIT: Done again. Though the random() function seems a bit messed up, it tends to repeat the same number many times in a row. Any ideas for a more actually random rng?
EDITIEDITEDITEDIT: Oh and i've added a 'scripted' npc moving in and near the Rotunda on PTTG's demand. This one is independent from the scheduler described above. I will soon add another such npc, but a randomly roaming one.