The illusion of life doesn't come from complex animations nor other Hollywood-tricks it comes from something unexpected happening in the world you live in.

Say you're talking to an NPC on Monday and it just so happens that on Mondays the NPC needs your help with a unique quest or that when you accidentally talk to another guy after that he has some related information to share because you completed a quest for the Monday guy.

A shop might be closed during the night and that NPC is standing in the Black Shroud fishing. He might have a different line of dialogue up his sleeves that let's you have a small peek into this NPCs life outside of potion-selling.

Depending on your rank an NPC might tell you about a quest or initiate an entire quest-line that highlights the history of Eorzea.

But SE decided to go ahead and destroy any chance of immersion in this game by making the "!" marks and then downgrading proper quests into mindless leve-likes.