Ok, for those of you who managed to get a horse on beta, what did you think?

Personally, I wasn't too pleased. I thought the mounting animation was a bit silly, with the thing just appearing out of nowhere like a ghost, but I learned to get used to it. Now the mount controls themselves were pretty clunky, just like in Skyrim, so at least they were staying true to ES.

But the worst part was getting DISMOUNTED. Now every game has its punishment for getting hit while mounted - WoW has daze, one of the most annoying mechanics in the game. But ESO? You get knocked right off your mount and stunned for a few seconds. THAT'S punishing.

Combined with the fact that mobs seem to have aggro radiuses like lighthouses and chase you to the end of the earth and back, it seems like it'd simply be safer to travel on foot. I couldn't even count the amount of times I got Christopher Reeved off my horse by a mob I aggro'd somewhere on the other side of the continent and was forced to watch myself get eaten alive by a pack of shalks because the great Vestige is expected to save Tamriel from a Daedric lord, but can't even manage to stand up in a timely manner.

To top it off, your horse slows down in combat, so even if the first hit doesn't knock you off, you're still going to take a pounding while trotting at half speed.

Otherwise, great game.

Actually, the forced-dismount penalty is good for a few reasons. Allow me to present them in a list:

1) If you actually get knocked off your horse, you're going to be stunned.

2) Mounts shouldn't be a way of avoiding combat as much as a way of quickly traveling an area that is already safe.

3) You can feed your horse in a way that makes you less vulnerable to being knocked off it. If the penalty for being knocked down weren't severe, everyone would just feed the horse apples.

I didn't get to try it, but I didn't bother with getting the CE free horse in the first place because I expected it would be like this.

I loved it. Made good sense for the horse to vanish.. hell what would the place look like with hundreds of horses wondering around lol.

Aside from that, did anyone ELSE notice you can feed them to improve them in several ways huh?

EDIT: Just noticed someone has above lol. Yeah one option does indeed make you harder to knock off.

Yep. Feeding Twinklebottom (Did you notice you could name your horsey too? GLEE!) was one of my favorite things.

Yeah, but at 1% a day, it's gonna take a while before the faintest puff of an angry bear's fatigued breath stops knocking you off your steed. And by the time you've actually got a resilient horse, you'll still be slow as molasses.

Well, it does look like there are multiple mount types available for purchase, so you can always accelerate that process by abandoning your pony (cruel) for an upgrade (you heartless monster).

Yes, naming the horse was awesome to discover. I don't think other players can see it though.