Age of Conan Developer Profile Interview

MMORPG.com has published another one of their developer profile interviews, this time with Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures lead designer Ole Herbjornsen.
Q: How have things been progressing with Age of Conan? Have you enjoyed working on such a strong IP as Conan?

A: The development of Age of Conan is going really well. We're right on track and the game is definitively looking really, really good at this point. Creating these games is so much work - it's like creating four games at the same time - but when working with so many talented individuals, it is just a joy to see how the game evolves every time I log in for some playtime. I constantly find something new that's added since last time.Personally, I had only limited knowledge of Conan before starting to work at Funcom. However, during the first few weeks I read all the original works and several pastiche books as well. This opened my eyes to a different kind of fantasy universe, more brutal, less civilized, more evil, in a word, conanesque. From a design stand-point having such a strong IP as Conan is both a blessing and a curse. We have to be much more aware of potential lore issues than if we did not have an IP to follow (or if it was developed in-house). On the other hand it gives us lots of inspiration and background information which we can use as a basis for our game.