What’s to keep them engaged is working towards things that’ll increase their survivability. Buying/training a faster mount to escape the dangerous wildlife, buying the most suitable clothing for the climate, buying better armoury against the bandits. Then there’s working towards boat travel up the rivers, inventing vehicles or improving on existing ones like the sled.
Once all that is done and we can travel further and faster, we still have the world to travel. And because us humans are quite sensitive, power hungry and ego-centric there’ll always be disputes which lead to interesting outcomes, some of which could affect travel. If there are Counts and Dukes now who want more than what they’ve already got, imagine the politics once we actually get in game and they see the opportunities.
The biggest boredom threat to COE will be how quickly it is to get to the end game. Which is why it’s extremely important not to write off pvpers and hostiles as griefers and demanding the devs implement some mechanics to protect them. Because for as long as there will be player threats and wars, there will be engagement and reaching the end game will be much harder.