Burning Crusade's quality delayed WAR

Speaking to MTV, Mythic boss Mark Jacobs has said that the quality of questing in World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade delayed development of his own MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

"We obviously had a major bump when Burning Crusade came out," Jacobs said. "When [Blizzard] released that expansion, they raised the expectations of the player."

Jacobs paid tribute to Blizzard's ability to create stand-out quests that players would talk about with each other, and to pack its game with content.

"They put in some of what we call 'watercooler quests', the things that you talk about around the watercooler," he said.

"We looked at the amount of content they put in that and said we need more time if we want to add some of those things, if we want our own watercooler quests or more watercooler quests. So our choice was to delay the game and spend more time on it."

Warhammer Online has been delayed several times from its original 2007 release date, and is finally set to launch on Thursday next week. Public servers for those who pre-ordered the collector's edition of the game will open this Sunday in both Europe and the US.

This will mark the end of an epic two years of beta testing, as Mythic has striven to match the quality of Blizzard's world-dominating MMO.

To find out whether it has succeeded, watch out for Eurogamer MMO's review very soon indeed.