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I am not so sure whether those rules, roles, options will do anything else but create a situation where an individual character is, again, pigeonholed. I also suspect it would lead to the formation of a couple of "ideal" tactics that will be used ad nauseam.

I feel more for a game environment that simulates reality as good as possible, with physics, weather, collision detection etc., plus some very carefully considered extras like certain magical spells. For the latter, you might have to look at fantasy miniature games; they have been dealing with many of the design problems involved for decades now, ever since the 1970's.

As for NPC's versus players:

1) NPC's allow the scale of the battle to be increased upwards: not a few dozen (at most a few hundred) players, but thousands or tens of thousands of NPC's led by / intermixed with player heroes, commanders and specialists.
2) There seems to be an assumption that, if you create an environment conducive to co-operation and the application of recognisable "mass" tactics, you will get something approaching recognisable warfare. I disagree. I think some experienced, disciplined, pre-organised groups are capable of this, but this is already the case: such groups pwn their opponents in WoW's battlegrounds, and from what I hear, the worst are the ones who are also equipped with raid-derived epics...:(
Fact is, organisation and discipline are already requirements for mass PvP. They are not required to play, but sure as hell are useful, and necessary against more numerous / better equipped/ organised opponents. That it doesn't happen has to do with the players, not the rules. That the tactics we see in such cases aren't comparable to what they *ought* to be in a pre-industrial fantasy world DOES bear a relation to the way in which the world is simulated (which is rather crappy and unrealistic at the moment)
3) The sheer organisational difficulty of gathering, training and leading a force of players will always create a rather low "upper limit" for an organised force. Historically, this was done through training, obligatory military service, disciplinary measures, ideological indoctrination, a common ethos, etc. I would be surprised if, in-game, a group of 100 players could be gathered for a single fight. Re-enactors in Europe and the US (SCA as well in the USA) do it occasionally, but that is still pretty hard and involves people who, through training, study and personal inclination, WANT to simulate historical tactics and battles. Will you find many such people in a mmorpg? I very much doubt it. But you CAN relatively easily find several dozen players who would make great (NPC-manned) unit commanders, heroes and specialists.