It seems to me they are horse wearing armor.
That's my opinion if you ask. These are the only pictures available for the ride, so I am not 100% sure. But they look different based on your race.
Do you know if we still will use some gatekeepers? i read on L2Blah that a new system will be implemented too, i think as the wow system, or AION system, that u don't instantly teleport to a place, u have to watch all the road and stuff. Maybe it's that when in the gameplay video we saw a darkelf jumping some walls and stuff, idk..... do you have any info about that?
Even in aion you would tp as we tp between towns but you would get the other tp that you see the way, if you wanted to go to other places around towns.
Since the play style will change so much i think that this would be a minor change compared to other changes!
Plus it might take some more time to tp but you lose the blackscreen effect and this helps imo the players that dont have good pcs.
Do we really lose all of our skills after we do that quest after 85? what about all the enchants we put into it, like +30 skills or +15 prophecy etc. they just disappeared?