We have already been testing a quest system to depopall() on all trash mobs when a boss mob or named is being killed. It seems to completely stop all lag as compared to previously people would go LD and lag extremely bad in some cases.
But, I really don't like the quest solution, because then anyone else in the same zone will then see an empty zone, which not only looks bad, but also lets them roam freely without clearing anything and basically negates all of the work to create the trash mobs in the first place.
Any special settings like the radius_spawn idea or freezing them to stop all AI and pathing would have to be specified by a setting in the NPC_types table so it could be done on a per mob basis. Then you can decide which ones you want to be affected by any of these ideas, and which ones to remain normal all of the time. So, bosses, scripted NPCs and maybe some roamers might want to have this setting turned off, but other than that, almost all trash mobs aren't always needed.
By turning off the AI or freezing the mobs like KLS mentioned, that might help the server performance, but I honestly don't see any issues at all lag-wise on my local lan, ever. I only ever hear about the lag, so it is pretty obviously a bandwidth issue. I have 1MB upload bandwidth from my ISP, which is fairly decent as far as home connections go. If 1MB up can have lag during a raid of about 3 groups with maybe 70 people logged into the server, then I think there could be some definite improvements to improve bandwidth utilization.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to not send regular updates of the current location of every spawn in the zone every second to every character in the zone. So, the only solution I can think of is to not have trash mobs spawn unless a player is within range. The only other option would be if someone could figure out a way for the server to only send location updates for NPCs within a radius of the client.
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