Nice to see the AI coming along. But what exactly does 'improvement' entail?
Any specifics?

kran are silicon based lifeforms, not rocks.

but why wold you claim enki are easily affected with magnetism? did I miss something? Do felines have hunks of iron in their heads?

Magnetism in the meta-psychological sense of the word - as in mesmerisation. Animal Magnetism.  Hypnotism falls under the general category.

I would expect silicon to be less attuned to picking up the same signals or respond to the same suggestions than another flesh based life form, though it would probably be a case of understanding Kran psychology and adapting.

(Yes, I  have a tendency to think far too much into things like this, but then I research this type of thing as a hobby...)

Well, assuming every sentient being in Yliakum has a subconscious capable of reacting to these stimuli, I don't see why not. Problem arises when nobody else understands the mechanics of what you're doing.
You may have to consider the potential differences of target choice: an Enki, for instance, would probably be far easier to affect with magnetism than, say, a Kran.

Goujah looks interesting. Feed the Kormi to it.

they use both

Good stuff.
Movin' on up.

Interesting.
Do/will all npcs and ai entities move along pre-defined way-point based paths, or will there be space for dynamism there, like a nav-mesh?

Dynamic world occurrences. This is never going to compete with the likes of WoW, but as it stands now, it's just as static, with 95% less content.
The planeshift setting could be made very much more enjoyable, and exciting, by introducing dynamic, random, events in.

Also - challenge, reasons to group. I've said before that there is no point to hunting if the mobs just stand there, for the most part, and wait for you to hit them. I heard that they were switched off of aggression, because they were 'too hard'. Cry more. Danger is good.

Danger and dynamic content is fantastic.

Hence, I think, that when the AI tribes update finally gets put in place, then things will start to pick up again - because that creates interesting scenarios.

At the moment there are no interesting new scenarios.

Imagination and community roleplay is all well and good, but if the world is static then you run into a fairly static number of things you're able to feed off of. If you can create emergent gameplay then you can feed imagination. Look at Dwarf Fortress and the number of insane stories that game comes up with, based on entirely on the shenanigans of a bunch of crazed ASCII symbols. Admittedly it doesn't work quite the same way in an MMO, but it's a good example of how the two intertwine.

One cannot simply fall back on the community, when other games offer more to feed their communities.
Games like Ryzom, for instance, have interesting little quirks - for instance, their animals migrate and go places. They interact with each other - predators will hunt other animals, etc.
In the tribes system you have various AI needs - people will naturally prefer one tribe over another. This will create interesting player interaction, based entirely around game mechanics, if you take it far enough.
Tell me that the community would not feed off of things like this.

What we have is too static. You cannot rely on GM events all the time. Feed the community, and the rest follows naturally. Humans attach narratives to everything and anything. 

These are very interesting changes. It's good to see big attempts to address balance and mechanics problems like this. At some point I'll have to get back in game - with the recent large changes I'm very interested.