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One more thing. With Nezzarin's obscene bonus on Listen, Spot, and Initiative (+20!), and the evicerator beetles Obey the Wormtouched quality, there's no reason Nezzarin shouldn't have total--or at least a majority of--control of the battlefield. Some players who aren't used to having the enemy get the drop on them may call foul at your seemingly unquenchable need to get in first licks. But, Nezzarin's--effectively--an uber-watchdog.
Oh, regarding Improved Trip, that's a good idea, considering I'm a little to nice on my PCs equipment (I swapped Improved Sunder for Improved Toughness, myself.) If you'd really like to push your PCs, give the Kyuss Knights the evolved template from Libris Mortis. It attaches beautifully to all of them, and offers a surprising increase in challenge and versatility in spell-like abilities.

Like others have found, Balabar Smenk has been a ball to roleplay. For me, I made him the real leader of Diamond Lake with strong connections in Greyhawk. In terms of roleplaying him, Al Swearengen from Deadwood was a particular inspiration.

I've had fun with several others but none more so than Moreto.
Playing such a civilised "bad guy" surrounded by such disgraceful companions in the most unlikely of places was a lot of fun. I'm surprised my party didn't just let loose on them. It took the party Gnome to "offend" Moreto to even look like initiating combat. Too much fun!

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

I used movie characters for many of my own NPCs, too, and found it surprisingly easy. I regreted not using Balabar Smenk more in retrospect, but I did write a sidestory for Diamond Lake detailing his fate. (May share if asked.) I used Charlton Heston's "Ben Hur," from the movie of the same name, for Loris Raknian, and--get this--Christian Bale's "Patrick Bateman" from American Psycho for Okoral. Moreto--if you hadn't guessed--was Bela Lugosi's Dracula. I was told my voice for Zyrxog (the mind flayer) was a dead-ringer for Starscream from Transformers. But this may be the funniest--Ed Asner for Bozal Zahol. Well, just look at his illustration! It's very close.

On a side note, Melinde became an important NPC in our group, moving to the Free City to rebuild the shrine to Heironeous in Midnight's Muddle. Oh, and I made the dwarves in Pitch Blade jocks/cowboys. My players hated them the moment they appeared--but in that DM-satisfying hate kinda way.

Sweet maple syrup! So many ideas. Many of my own ideas came out on other posts...so, my favorite so far are, in order:
1: Iuz--so appropriate after AoW, w/Redhand likely under PC control. Could even reference the wonderful backdrop by Richard Pett.
2: Tarrasque(s)--origin (within D&D realm), varieties of different CRs, etc. (God, a kaiju tarrasque...I gotta build me some o' dat!)
3: Time Travel--really, now. "Chronomancy," if you will, is always treated like the black sheep of fantasy-oriented material. Sure, it's challenging to try to integrate something as possibly chaotic as time travel into a well-established game world, but hey...can't make an omelet without cracking a few orbs of dragonkind. Paizo, I'll offer you a salute if you print/can refer me to a really good time travel adventure, let alone publish an adventure path dealing with the theme.
A few ideas I would like to see further explored include:
Space Travel--what's up there? Maybe Spelljammer? Or maybe mooncalves and moonbeasts! Break out the Lovecraft, it's Nyarlathotep!
Planar Adventuring--exploring the nature of the elemental planes, planes of shadow, Arborea, etc. Though, after seeing the preview for STAP, and what I know in passing of SCAP--though I missed that one--no Abyss, please. I expect I'll have had my fill. (Though, in truth, I'm still finding countless uses for the Fiendish Codex 1, and eagerly await 2. Great stuff.)

The most significant modification I've made to my Age of Worms campaign has been fairly superficial, yet mood-defining. I opted to roll a d12 to randomly determine what month the campaign would begin in at the start. A "1" for January, "7" for July, etc. I rolled a one. The campaign has been set in the dead of winter since its onset. Although I am unfamiliar with the Greyhawk calendar, the campaign is currently in late Feburary, as the party prepares to leave Alhaster. The fortunate roll has allowed me to design "winter" oriented random monster tables, and altogether required little modification. (I even interposed magically-powered heating for Magepoint.) The sense of cold, desolation, and inhospitability the winter season has brought has given the campaign a unique flavor.

I thought Nezzarin was one of the more flexible encounters in SoLS. Personally, I had intended for him to burst through one of the east or west doors in Room 3, depending on which side the PCs entered from. The beetles would then approach the staircase from outside, thus putting the PCs in a pincer attack.
However, the best laid plans of mice and men...Instead, courtesy of the party diviner (I should've seen this coming) casting both prying eyes and arcane eye (in succession), the group was able to discern that I put Nezzarin in Room 3 to ambush the party. So, I modified it slightly, in that the party became aware of the "ambush" so when Nezzarin leapt from room 3 into room 1, as the case was, the surprise was less significant.
Long story short, use Nezzarin how you are most comfortable. I prefered to keep him out of the open, and aimed to decrease the distance he would have to traverse, given his lack of SR and lack of ranged attacks. Thus, consider putting him inside the monolith for the greatest challenge for your PCs.

I believe our campaign's best NPC so far has been Loris Raknian, though I would put Captain Okoral with him as well. The party swept up at the Champion's Games (as they should), and Raknian would consistently be forced to acknowledge his decline with each victory--like a victory against him personally. In the end, the city police arrived shortly after the ulgurstasta broke free (in the middle of the night, no less). And while Okoral bought enough time for Raknian--by lying to the city police--to retreat to his room to make ready to flee, the former gladiator champion/hero lost his will to fight. The party chased him to his sanctum, paranoid the assassin Okoral was lurking, only to find him staring up at a portrait of Lahaka, Ekaym's sister, whom the PCs discovered as a zombie below. (I even adapted Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" to have him recite, recalling the lover he murdered). Repentant and aware at how Bozal had used him, he submitted to the authorities.
What made this encounter--and thus, Loris Raknian--so memorable to me was his distance, and his end (he was hanged later, offstage) was described to me by one of the players as "refreshing," especially after such a combat-intensive adventure.

Dragonchess became a fun, interesting diversion in our game, but in truth, I would have liked to flesh it out a bit more. Thanks to Herremann the Wise for the mods. In the next AP, if dragonchess is still in vogue, I'll try to apply it.
Though it might have been more appropriate to use Profession (gambler), I opted to substitute it for a "Knowledge (gaming)" skill--appearing on Brd/Rog/Wzd class lists (which worked out nicely for our party of arcanists).

We're about three-quarters through the path, and my players are already verging on 17th level, (which according to the suggested levels per adventure, puts them kinda one level higher than the recommended level). This I owe to a love of sidequests--both on the part of my players, and most of all, I think, myself. In my opinion, the AoW adventure path is perfectly tailored to award experience in keeping with the general progression of difficulty from adventure to adventure. (This was one of the most important reasons I got hooked on it.) With little or no sidequests, the party should be at the appropriate level for any of the adventures ..or so it seems. In truth, if the DM awards experience for a sidequest encounter (as I believe is the players' right,) this can offset the difficulty of the encounters in the upcoming adventures. I've found two solutions:
1: The easiest is to let the players have a few easier-than-they-might-be encounters, thanks to their experience, and let the surplus ride itself out. After all, in a few levels, that extra three hundred experience they got at level two won't matter much.
2: This is what I like to do. Look at the "Scaling the Adventure" section at the end of each adventure. (SoLS didn't have one, though. Boo.) From there, what I do is prepare a "stronger" encounter based on the recommendations, and offer it to the players as what I call a "Test of Valor." (Thanks to Onimusha: Dawn of Souls for the idea)
What a "Test of Valor" entails is creating an encounter--on the side--that is one or two CR higher than the published encounter. Then, when the players reach the encounter, I declare a "test of valor" option, saying how much the CR will increase by if they accept (the ToV CR should never, IMO, be any greater than four with respect to the party level). If they do accept, I swap the encounter, and the challenge increases. The PCs should still get the appropriate experience for the new encounter, but the harder difficulty should keep them interested.

The Harbinger, by far. Party simply put up Antimagic Field and walked in slicing and dicing. Over within the first round.

Ditto, here. Our wizard shot him with Antimagic Ray (Spell Comp, I think) and that was that. I decided to allow him to at least retain some dignity, by letting my cleric blast him straight to wherever spell weaver liches go when they're utterly destroyed.

Though two other "cakewalks" of note would include the oculus demon and "The Overgod" from TPoR. The oculus demon got his eye blasts off, but thanks to our dragonwrought (Races of the Dragon) kobold unintimidated by a paralyzing gaze, a prismatic orb (or ray? I forget) randomly sent him to Arborea, of all places! The Overgod's demise was a surprise. After our elven fighter/wizard dealt 52 points of damage to it, courtesy of +2 holy spiked chain that critically hit, the spell Critical Strike (Spell Comp--the Overgod was flat-footed), and the cleric's spell Blessing of the Righteous (PHB2, I think), I was reminded that the Overgod would have to save against massive damage. No prob, w/a +22 mod, but wouldn't ya know it? A natural one.

My party is just heading into the "Prince of Redhand" adventure at (mostly) 16th level--thanks to their love of sidequests--and consist of three PCs and my own NPC (w/equivalent PC value in gear). They have a heavy arcane casting bent, but have managed nearly every encounter quite successfully, with oddball exceptions. We have:

kobold diviner/divine oracle/fatespinner/master specialist
(handles recon/blasting/debuffing)
vanara (Oriental Adv) bard/seeker of the song
(handles buffing/NPC negotiations)
w/cohort: duskling totemist (melee assault)
elven fighter/wizard/spellsword/eldritch knight
(handles tactical combat w/spiked chain-like legacy weapon and transposition and channeled spells)
halfling cleric of Fharlanghn/sacred purifier/wormhunter (Dragon #338)
(handles healing/melee/buffing/positive damage dealer)

With this party (the cleric is my NPC), the groups approach is to take charge of the battle map instantaneously, by eliminating key threats with distance spells. While more melee-oriented characters are supported by the bard, they are better prepared to defend any spellcasters. My recommendation for any set of players looking to form a cohesive party is to learn through trial. That is, take your group into combat--even a "practice" combat--and see what strategies unfold. Soon, they'll come second nature.
But, if I had to pick four classes that might make for a cohesive party aside from my own group's in AoW, I would opt for: ranger, bard, wizard, and cleric (which is similar to the above, for that matter)

I like this topic. When did my players feel their hearts ready to pop from their chests the most potently in the AoW campaign? IMO, although they are just about to start SoLS, (and personally, I can't wait,) the singularly most exciting encounter was with the Ebon Aspect in TFoE. They convinced one of the acolytes of Vecna to surrender (whom has since become a reoccuring NPC ally), and with his limited knowledge and the "sense of evil" emanating from the frigid pool in the Dark Cathedral, they buffed as well as any group of 4th level heroes could...as it dropped half their crew! They only fell to unconscious, but the terror-inducing shock when the aspect went into the bloodthirst of Erythnul was great. (We would use this encounter as the first founding ritual for our elven fighter/wizard's legacy weapon.)