Well, just because people will look it up online doesn't mean that it shouldn't be added. Otherwise what is the point of the Sightseeing Log or the "Greatest Secret" quest? A lot of people will always want to do it themselves, and this is the perfect game since it brings in a crowd that is a little more laid back (see: endless threads about whether to look up endgame fights beforehand or not).

Could also help curb that aspect by making certain aspects of the spawn randomly generated for each player. For instance, maybe for one player it needs to be raining and the NPC shows up in Gridania, or it needs to be foggy and the NPC will show up in Limsa Lominsa.

I just think it would be nice if we were rewarded (or could be) by talking to the NPC present in the world, because a lot of them are interesting, and it'd be nice to see other players interacting with the general NPC population. It would also encourage people to walk/run/ride places because they could talk to people along the way. The people who will just look stuff up aren't going to be contributing to the exploration of the open-world anyway because they are more focused on the destination not the journey.