Personally, it's very hard for me to imagine how mounts will be implemented within the current framework of PS. Advanced features like player-owned houses with limited interior-customization seem much easier to imagine at this point -- they might be here by the time Steel Blue is released (cross fingers).
On the other hand mounts just seem...difficult. For land-based mounts like horses, there's the issue of where they're stored. Mounts can't just appear and disappear at will -- you'd have to incorporate areas that are "stables" into the maps, where the player can "rent" one at any time, or possibly/alternately there is a stable that the stable-watcher NPC calls "yours" (even though "your" particular space is technically also owned by hundreds or thousands of other characters) where your bought and owned horse is kept. The latter option will allow a player to feel that their character has more domain over virtual property, but mildly hurts suspension of disbelief. And mounted characters absolutely should not be allowed to enter cities, or ridiculousness will inevitably ensue. Mounted characters would have slight advantages in overland travel speed and in combat.
Aerial mounts (like pretasaurs) are tougher. Begin with the pertinent issues from land mounts, and consider the factor of flight. The player should NOT be able to control the flying mount (which would take forever to code and still introduce 80 million new bugs), but rather it should be handled like World of Warcraft which has the player selecting a destination and the flying mount auto-piloting to that destination (and the aerial view is priceless). Essentially the player goes to a "stable" where pretasaurs are kept, selects another stable for pretasaurs in Yliakum, and the mounted character is shown being auto-flown to that destination. But the usefulness of owning extremely expensive flying mounts must be apparent to the player
vis a vis their friends magically teleporting them.
I have no doubt that by 1.0 all of these issues will have been worked out and things like mounts implemented into stratospheric quality. Go PS team!
