Paul Barnett, the creative director of Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, was at the Develop Online conference where he spoke about the launch woes of their MMORPG as well as the problems they have encountered in trying to avoid the influence of the juggernaut known as World of Warcraft.

First up, he spoke about the launch. In classic Barnett fashion, he declared that "When we launch these games, we can't schedule for sh**." He further added that "We're nearly there, God help us, the fifth time we schedule it it's going to work. Lesson one: don't trust your schedulers."

With regards to how they have tried to avoid World of Warcraft's influence in the design of the game, he started out by making an interesting statement: "I believe WOW is a work of flawed genius." Why does he think it is"flawed"? Well, he explained this further:

When you dismantle [these works] you can never be sure whether you get genius or flaw.The reason I don't play other online games is that they're corrupting, they are cancerous, they change the way you think.

He backed up this observation with an experience he encountered while creating the game. Namely, one change that was made with the quest structuring which resulted in a very long discussion with the development team:

That one change took three months of meetings, because the people I was up against were corrupted by the gaming experiences they'd had. They weren't capable of thinking sideways because they knew the answer, and it worked, and resulted in a game that is very successful.

We see a number of interesting points raised by Barnett during the Develop Online conference. Perhaps this little look behind the scenes of the development of MMORPGs will make us appreciate the amount of hard work the developers have been putting into the games released.

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• Rumor: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning launches this September 23