There is a lot of things all over the website that are out of date, we just assist in showing situations where it was said publicly that its been changed

I thought you could train your skills up to journeyman? Unless that was changed.

OPC in the end are like NPC. If NPCs couldnt train their skills, that would be ridiculous. So being more effecient in training skills as a player should be all players get. Otherwise, botting will be a more severe issue.

OPC are "like NPC's" only in the VERY loosest interpretation - that while they are offline, they technically are a "Non-player Character".

That is pretty much where their similarities stop. An NPC has their own motivations, reactions, identity, skill set, family, etc, etc, on and on - they are basically another player.

An OPC is simply an AFK player running a script. It doesn't do anything unless you tell it to. It could, hypothetically, sit and stare at a wall for 4 days. The "botting" thing is most likely precisely why OPC's can't gain skills - it would remove the need to actually play the game.

Long story short, NPC's gain skills because they are designed to grow and develop. OPC's don't gain skills since the intent is for the world to be 100% persistent - your character is always able to be impacted/interacted with, and allowing skill gain 24/7 would break things.