The data load is very large in conan when you run into a new area on your screen, and noone else is there.
The game has to load at a minumum,
The terrain Map (easiest, as it is static unchangeable date)
The material nodes (rocks,trees,iron,etc…). It has to find which ones have not been harvested, and load those.
The NPC’s (which ones are dead, where were they last in relation to thier spawn point, so it can “cacth the” up to real time)
Player Bases (everything built will now have to be pulled in to the server visually)
Player thralls/pets (what is there hunger/health etc…)
I am sure there is much more, but that happens every few seconds as you are running in Conan.
The work around for alot of games is areas that have no player builds, destructible environments, and very limited AI patterns for NPC’s. RDR2 has some areas you cannot ride your horse in sprinting (single player main camp). Too much going on. They disguise it as being proper etiquette.
To get a proper mount in Conan, they would have to do light speed type thing where everything goes blurry and nothing spawns in as you ride past it. Problem being when you stopped, it would have to play catch up on loading the area you stopped in. And other players seeing you “wiz” by, but can’t interact, because you haven’t loaded them.
This you describe as stuff loading after you enter the area is already happening at least on xbox single player.
They might end up having to revamp the whole map loading chunks which lead to the current no mounts paradigm for performance reasons and as a result we will also get mounts. And the game will benedit for better performance and increased popularity. Ever thought why mmos get away selling overpriced mounts? People love mounts!
The destructible environment (material nodes) and the unique player structures make pre- loading near impossible, as they are constantly changing depending on player interactions. The NPC’s are more common in games, and may be less taxing. Except for the spawn % tables being involved. Admittedly, i haven’t played many MMO’s, but from the ones i have tried, there is very little randomness to the actual in game world map and spawns, and only the actual players you come across change the unique dynamic of a spot on the map, thus, the areas can be pre-loaded in bigger chunks. I haven’t been in the midnight grove in a while, but from my memory, it plays extremely lag free. That is because it is closer to most game designs, and there is very little random things happening. Spawns of NPC’s are not capture-able, so are not tiered to my knowledge (@Multigun would know more if it were). If so, then no data tables, just consistent respawns and no player structures.)
The only way i could see mounts being feasible would each BIOME would have to load like a dungeon, thus you could pre-load more map data at a time. But then, you would be in loading screens every time you crossed a biome. And i like the fluidity (no lag jokes!!!) of running from biome to biome real time.