Quote Originally Posted by 'Fursphere',index.php?page=Thread&postID=189009#po st189009
If you don't know - Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (the original) was originally a Warhammer game designed for GW. Gamesworkhop didn't like it and rejected it. Instead of scrapping it, Blizzard just re-engineered it to become what is now Warcraft.

Most epic mistake ever? Probably.

So when the hardcore Warhammer guys talk about Warcraft and Starcraft being Warhammer / Warhammer 40k ripoffs - they're right. Gamesworkshop is just dumb.
Not necessarily. It's possible that the original Warhammer game wouldn't have done as well as Warcraft did. Even back then, Warhammer had a large amount of background material, and nailing such a thoroughly-developed universe in a license to the extent that Warhammer fiends will be happy about it, is pretty difficult. It's walking on eggshells to make people happy with a popular license. We can assume the game Blizzard was working on was fun -- WC1 kicked ass -- but from GW's rejection of the project, we can guess that it wasn't up to snuff as a Warhammer universe product. Warcraft didn't have to be true to the source, it only had to be a good game. If they'd stuck with the Warhammer license, it's as likely as not that it would've gone down as a near-miss and neither GW nor Blizzard would have profited much from it.