There are several reasons behind this decision. During the prototyping of the game we experimented a lot with different view-options, but it soon turned out that the aim-based combat we strived for was next to impossible to implement in third-person view without a lot of immersion-breaking graphical gizmos. Furthermore it became close to impossible to sneak up on people for stealing from or an ambushing them, it became too easy to look around corners etc and Mortal gold all this took away a lot of the tactical elements of the game not to mention immersion. In the end we went all-in on first-person view and built the game around it; from aiming in combat, first-person footsteps synched to movement, double-vision when getting exhausted, blood and sweat in your eyes, first-person spell-effects etc, to mounting a horse by taking the reins and getting tunnel vision at high speeds. This is also fundamentally different from MMO that offer a first-person view by zoom the camera all the way in, where you just feel like a bodiless levitating camera and get a ton of graphical glitches as the game is not meant to be played that way.
