This has already been confirmed by Todd. Animals will not be suicidal anymore. Wolves will be openly hostile to you if it so happens that, at the moment you encounter them, they are on "hunting mode". If, while on hunting mode, they killed something before you encountered them, they'll be on a "defensive mode", maybe growling at you, but not attacking, because they already found food, and will be protecting it.

I just hope I'm not the only person that ever gets attacked...
*EDIT* Scratch that, I hope I'm not the only THING that ever gets attacked!

No, they have open cities this time around i think... I hope...

I love this idea, and besides its just nice being into contact with random NPCs as you go about your adventures. Can get pretty lonely when travelling at night in the woods, but if you come across a small town or village it can liven you up and of course give you something to do : )

It's already been confirmed that the creatures will vary in their responses to you - from outright hostile through to passive.

And we know that cities / towns will have their own local economy, which can somehow respond to events the play out (e.g higher prices when things are in short supply). I think that means that the citizens and traders will be much more alive and realistic. It's only small jump from this to have them going from town to town, for example to pick up supplies. I'm hopeful...

Already taken care off, at least the de-agrroing, i read somewhere that many monsters will just ignore you if you don't bother them. like my little brother knocking at my door <_< but as for fleeing.... we'll just wait and see, altho such a feature wouldn't surprise me, what do birds do when you approach them? (go figure!) if you run towards a wolf he'll do the same as that bird unless he's protecting something.

Let us inject some mathematics into this discussion.

Suppose there are D kilometers of roads in Skyrim, and N npc's capable of walking the roads. And assume each npc spends 1/3 of his/her time travelling. It couldn't really be more than 1/3, given that they have to sleep, eat, work, socialize, what have you.

So the density of npc's on the roads at any given time is N/D. Now if we make up some numbers, we can get a ballpark estimate of this. Suppose Beth puts 1000 npc's in the game that walk around (meaning 333 on the road at any given time). Sounds like a lot. As for D, there are 5 cities, giving at a minimum probably 10 major roads, where each road is probably over 1 km long. So at the very least, 10 km of roads. This means the npc density is no more than 333/10 = 33.3 npcs per kilometer. So even with 1000 roaming npc's, the closest they'll be on average is about 1 every 30 meters. But I was really conservative with the road estimate, it could be 30 km. If it's 30 km, then npc's are 100 meters apart.

My point is, even with a really high number of npc's and optimal* distribution along the roads, the roads will still look sparse.

*By optimal, I mean evenly spread. If they're not evenly spread, then most of the time you'll see no one. But then sometimes you'll see a bunch.

Still, being able to see a few travelers and caravans are nice.

It's kind of like Red Dead Redemption. You will occasionally see a few travelers on a wagon or riding a horse. I'm not sure how Red Dead Redemption did it, but I think they pretty much randomly generated the people walking.

And if they add generic NPCs, they can just spawn them every so often on roads based on a random timer and a distance monitor; give them a basic destination, and when the player leaves their vicinity, they vanish. There's always been "random encounters" in TES.

Not like you'll know the name of some random dude walking along the road, anyways.

Well not just that. I want to see like gaurds walking into the armorsmith shop. Then coming out with what you can tell is a better set of armor. ((can work very nicely with their scaling system.)) I want to see taverns having drunks being servered drink from bar maids. I want to see the taverns with a music band in the back. The center has a couple or two dancing then leaving. I want to see packages being delivered and armed caravans. NPC trading and haggling for goods at the bazzar. I would like to ask gaurds for dirrections to said place and npcs lission to my convercations. Asking me to come see them after talking with the gaurd. Give me a questions because they hear I looking for let say the local blacksmith and there are spiders infesting the local mines. I want to be talking with npc and actully feel like I am there.

This of corse will have to have a better quest system then what oblivion had. Which is one reassion I think the world was so lifeless. I hate to say it Morrowind had a world that was very much alive what the game was. Then again It had to. You need to run around and ask 10 npc for info about your quest. I think the quest system is really why Oblivion had a weak and dead world. They did not need to have all these extra npcs in their game because there was no need to talk to them. No need to get dirrection. No need to look for anything. From the very start of oblivion you know where all the cities where at and could fast tarvel to them.

Usually the citizens didn't last very long; they are far squishier than the armored and armed guards. The higher in level your pc got, the tougher the random enemies are; while an npc could handle a start-of-the-game rat, they don't last long against timber wolves and lions. That one npc that threatens your character every time you get near him-"I'll turn your bones to ash!"? I usually eventually find him dead in my games, with a lion or wolf standing over the body. [if I don't kill him earlier] If there are merchants, I hope they can hire guards....

I don't remember anyone who lived in a city or even a town being killed except by me.

Even so, animals won't always attack in Skyrim, so that's mostly dealt with.

The explorers should have some way to distinguish who they are, though. When I go through dungeons and caves its sneaking and sniping; if I see an npc, I go with "hostile", and shoot them before I get close enough to alert them. Its a good thing I save before I go into ruins/dungeons/caves, I always had a save to go back to when I accidentally killed those non-hostile orc explorers in Oblivion.

YES! I got so annoyed with Oblivion and all the guards saying "If you have to travel by the nine divines stay on the roads!" I initially thought all the strong monsters were deep in the woods because the guards keep the roads safe, it turns out you run into minotaur lords on the roads all the time, in groups! But if you stay off the road you can walk from Bruma to Leyawin without passing so much as a mud crab, they should amend that statement to say "Stay on the roads because that is the only place you will find enemies outside of dungeons"

More life in forrests would be okay, but I don't want it to be the same as in Morrowind, where I met a cliffracer or some other random monster every step that I took. It took away the fun of roaming the lands for me, and made me almost always use travel services.

There were several NPCs who had regular routes between cities -- and they were not equiped properly with neither armour nor weapons to defend themselves. As has been mentioned, at high levels these hapless travelers would be attacked by bears, mountain lions, etc. while carrying out their script. There were at least a half dozen times I found dead NPCs lying next to the road, and several times I'd encounter them being chased by animals -- and I'd come to their rescue without so much as a thank you or bump in disposition. When finding dead NPCs, I remember thinking to myself... "Gosh, I hope that wasn't anyone related to a side quest." (This doesn't include the guards or hunters who I found dead on occasion also.)

I'm happy to hear that they are addressing this aspect.

Overall, I hope they add more of the docile animal types. And I'm thrilled to see birds in the trailer; I hope they add small song birds also, which often provide the most prominent wildlife presence in many real-life landscapes such as forests. These little details would go a long way to help create a "living, breathing world."

bring more life to the forest, and bring more life to guilds... i dont want to be the only one in the guild doing jobs for the fighters guild, have NPCs actually go out and actually go to different guild halls and go out to do jobs too
it would be nice to see a NPC go to a troll infested cave for a necklace sometimes instead of only me

I would like more life that is non-dangerous. Moreover, it is not enough to have birds you need songbirds, carrion birds, sea birds, and raptors. Foxes would be nice, but so would small coyotes. In addition, a whole set of animals that are most associated with cities like stray cats & dogs, pigeons, rats, gulls, etc. It would be neat to walk through a city and see a cat sleeping up on a wall, or a stray dog trotting down an alley way. It would be interesting if when you run across a park to catch a criminal if pigeons took flight from the ruckus.

The hardest part about animals I would guess is you will ALWAYS have idiots going around killing the animals, then making video of it, and then throwing it up on You Tube thus giving a black-eye to the games and gamers.
“Oh look, this [censored] bag went around killing every single one of the house cats in the game and set that video to German heavy-metal music; so now we all look like a-holes at the game studio.”
So many things that seem like they would be good to add to games fall into that “is it worth the negative publicity” category.