The team instead wanted to base travel on its waypoint system, which allows you to warp to any waypoints you’ve discovered. In fact, there was no plan for mounts during the original development of the game. Mounts didn’t arrive in Guild Wars 2 until its Path Of Fire expansion, which was released in 2017, five years after the game first launched. And here’s the thing: they’re inspired by Metroid and Zelda. They’re beautiful to look at, they do interesting things, and they feel so good to control. Guild Wars 2’s mounts are the best mounts in the MMO business. And with the game feeling like it’s in your grasp at last, you even get to show off your achievement with the flamboyance of your steed. Mounts are a reward, a step in the endgame that helps you feel like you’ve finally mastered an MMO’s world. This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they’ve taken to make their games.
