OK. I am an actual new player. I started playing this game in mid-April. For leveling my first character, I did not really need any mount. There are way points everywhere in Tyria. BTW I don't think Tyria was designed for mounts at all. Once I reached level 80, I went to the first chapter of PoF and grabbed a raptor, which took me less than an hour. Then I went to HoT, did everything with raptor+gliding, which worked just fine. What gave me a lot of trouble was running around LW3 maps. Picking blood rubies without a skyscale was legitimately annoying. I stopped doing it immediately after getting my ascended ring. I had no clue how easy it is to get ascended rings with LW4 currencies, so I spent a lot of time grinding the nasty LW3 maps. Later I got my griffon and skyscale, which I think happened 3 days before the first 28-day loyalty chest. I went back to bloodstone fen, and picking blood rubies is almost trivial. So in short, I do not believe you need a mount before you are given one, but a skyscale would help a lot getting through LW3 maps.