What will make Vanguard different from everything else on the market? According to a recent interview with Senior Programmer Amanda Poe, part of that answer lies in the AI: “If I were to pick my top beefs with most MMO AI, I would list pathing, combat predictability, and lack of flair/individual goals on the part of the NPCs. I'm hoping to dedicate a good portion of my time towards making mobs have agendas and behaviors of their own. As for combat, there is a fine line to walk, in my opinion. If there is no predictability to an NPC's actions, it may appear that it is just cycling through random actions and will be frustrating to the player because it takes away the player skill of learning how to fight different types of mobs. On the other hand, if they do the same thing all the time with no inventive behavior, it gets boring.”