New New World: Mounts

 Mounts are coming to New World and it truly is a BRAND NEW NEW WORLD!

 I am very excited for mounts and everything I have seen in the videos and on the PTR show that the team went above and beyond to deliver mounts.  I can't find the exact video but I remember distinctly at one point Scott Lane (lead boss man) stated if they were going to do mounts it would be when they could do them well and boy was that spot on.

 Mounts in New World will be much more than just a speed boost.  There is a riding skill, races and timed challenges, cosmetics, buffs and food, and multiple nice quality of life features.  

 One of the coolest finds on the PTR was realizing that your mount will try and follow the road if you set it to run on the road.  I had suggested exactly this in my Oct 2022 post on the topic when we first found out about mounts being in development.  I was comparing it to The Witcher games where the horse auto-paths:

...the horse in The Witcher will automatically follow paths/roads and the player can basically AFK to their destination if its at the end of the road.

 Speaking of the Witcher; the infamous "roof horse" is also a prevalent meme in the New World PTR.  This indicates there is some good movement capability with mounts to navigate them in tough terrain such as the roof of a building.

 

Roach?

 Another exciting note about mounts is that they will be allowed in Outpost Rush.  Gone are the days of long runs back to the action. This should spice things up as it should be much faster to help get to baron fights or to attack/defend back caps.  I know some players will complain about mounts in instanced PvP game modes but screw em... who the hell wants to spend 1+ minutes running back to the fight.  Note: mounts will not be available in wars.

 I am also looking forward to the mount tradeskill and building up my riding skill over time.  It doesn't look like it will take long to level up and some players may ask why it has to exist if it goes by fast, but just like leveling in RPGs it is a mechanism to train the player on the multiple features of mounts and unlock more and more capability in a controlled manner.  Crazy to think lots of players like it when a game walks them through a new feature!

 As far as mount variety I didn't want to see anything more than horses as I am not a big fan of New World getting too far down the fantasy path vs the original "age of discovery - the new world" vibe it had originally.  With that said I concede the "new world" ship has sailed and we are very much in knights and fantasy so I can live with horses, wolves, and lions as mounts.  Just glad it wasn't things like spiders.  I'd be cool with hippos though.