I don't mind guards roaming around patrolling, but vendors leaving at night is the stupidest thing ever. No other game does it for a reason, time consuming for players. No player is going to want to wait around for up to 2 hours (12 hours IG time, I believe?) waiting for their NPC to arrive. Instead they'd go get a life and stop playing Planeshift and buy Minecraft or WoW instead.
I could probably guarantee that WoW had this idea but dropped it because of it's time consumption to their players. You want the players to stay playing the game and not be bored, thus give them what they want when they want it.
With guards patrolling, making them stop walking when you want to train, talk or trade with them, would be a good task to place on your list of improvements, possibly at the top.
As it is Planeshift is frustrating enough with it's amount of lag, bugs, imbalance PPs, mobs and training, and broken quests.
This way, PlaneShift is developing from a playable and enjoyable game to a graphic demo you can just watch but not use...
I feel this way more and more with each update.
+1