The raptor mount is very, very impressive, and I think it represents very well the best aspects of the mastery system.
What I find so offensively idiotic about the traditional sandwich-breadcrumb MMO is that through its carrots and stick. Increasing your character level or adding new tier of gear invalidates everything you did previously and just bump up the stats. It doesn't change how you play the game in any meaningful way.
GW always has been the antithesis of this mentality saying that your gear and grinding shouldn't be the determining factor.
They made the mastery system to create further levelling, but instead of focusing on stats and new tiers of gear, it would be focused on ways that expanded your gameplay in other manners.
The gliding was a fantastic addition in the last expansion, and the base game became amazing when the gliding was added, and WvW has become really fun with the gliding added there as well.
The gliding provides gameplay, a new way to control, a natural gating that blends freely into with the traversal of the world.
The other masteries in HoT wasn't anywhere near as meaningful. Bounching mushrooms, exclusive vendors and the like felt more like old-school abillity gating. It's nice to see that these mounts actually serve a function, and are an extension of your character.
I was worried that the mounts would invalidate the ground gameplay (playing on foot), but I don't think this will be the case.
The core of GW2 is to explore and naturally and organically follow other players and tackle challanges together without being grouped or verbal communication. It's based on solo co-op.
They seem to be very well aware of it. I like how each mount has a opening attack that dismounts you. Psychologically it invites the player to engage enemy on mounts. In WoW I'd get so lazy I wouldn't dismount to help other players because it was a bother to wait those seconds to summon the mount again.
I like the incentive they are going for. At the same time, I also like how you cannot be on your mount while talking to vendors. This should keep the bloat of standing in a city trying to navigate and have it be blocked by 5000 effects heavy mounts just making the game clog and look insufferable bloated.
And it's nice to see the mounts representing that. Their speed boost is only slight, and they control with such heft that it feels like you're wrangling during hard moves. It reminds me of Shadow of the Colossus horse more than anything.
EDIT: Found it:
The animation set for it is wonderful. I had an idle animation where my character was dangling sideways in the saddle because the raptor was distracted by its own tail?
I do have some suggestions for the developers; I hope they will add variations of the mounts.
For the raptors I'd like to see different scale patterns, different horns, and other variants that doesn't change the model, but just make the mounts not look the same with different single dye channels.
It think the demo was really cool. The new area seems really nice and I liked the story. Is the god crazy, good or just evil? I'm pretty intrigued. I hope the story will expand on the origin of the human race and the world they originally came from (not being natural inhabitants of Tyria).
I also wonder if we will see other Gods like Komir in a Greek mythology gods clash.
Focusing on Gods instead of dragons, dragons, dragons is a good idea in my mind.
Next week testing the new elite specialization is something I really am looking forward to.