Original Post — Direct link
How hostile/hazardous will the World/NPCs be in the open World? Most mmorpg that I've played even in the last 10 years have made it very trivial when it comes to traveling and exploring the map. I find this makes for a VERY boring game.
Will Ashes be way more challenging in this regards?
Just some thoughts
1) Make NPC AI smarter and harder to kill. Better to have quests killing 5 challenging mobs instead of 50 easy ones.

2) Making NPC AI smarter and more challenging can add more depth to the game when traveling/exploring. Will make you think twice before running into that group of mobs or taking that shortcut if you're not well geared.

3) Having the option to solo grind or group grind on tougher mobs to level would be nice. Kinda how you could in Everquest 1.
about 3 years ago - Vaknar - Direct link
I'll just drop this statement here - which ofc applies to AI and all things regarding the dev process in and out of the game:
Our team is always looking into the latest technology to see what would make sense for us to implement in-game!

I'm sure the team is looking at how best to program creature AI, what makes sense, what is possible, etc :)