WoW player's guide to GW: Travelling the world
In WoW, the world is vast, and moving around from city to city can be quite a chore, but Blizzard made it enjoyable through the use of ship travel, flypoints and a wide array of mounts. This is where Guild Wars took the more direct route, so to speak. In GW, if you want to join your friends on the other side of the world, you simply press the M key, locate the city of your choice and click on it. It was developed with player time restraints in mind, because not all of us have 7 minutes to watch our character fly on the back of a griffon. The downside to this ease of use in GW is the lack of things like zeppelins, boats and epic mounts. In fact, not only do many WoW players not mind the travel times, but they're willing to spend hundreds of hours gaining the proper reputation, faction or whatever else needed to get that perfect mount.
Will they have mounts in Guild Wars 2? Those details have not been announced yet, but judging from the wild popularity of mounts in WoW and most other MMOs, it would seem GW would be doing themselves a favor by at least providing the option to gain a mount for something other than map travel, if time is a concern.