As the story goes Blizzard and Games workshop had an agreement for a Warhammer fantasy computer game but GW didn't like what Blizzard was producing, so the contract was cancelled. Blizzard had put a lot of work in the project and dont want to waste their work so they changed the looks a bit and .. taadaaa !... born was Warcraft. None of the 2 had confirmed but afaik they didnt denie the story. So make of it what you want ;-)

Knightmare said:

That's why GW will not ever have any babies. THey have the knack of "pulling-out" in time, all the time.

But still, the bastard child Warcraft was born. But that setting doesn't make any sense! It has female Orks! Everyone knows that female Orks don't exist. Orks reproduce through the release of fungus spores, everybody knows that!

That is only because you are thinking of Orcs with a K. Orcs with a C do have women. Anywho that is not quite the actual trurth. The original Interplay team that became Blizzard (formerly of Virgin Interactive) were huge GW fans and wanted to make a game. They made BlackThrone or thorns.. either way it was a 40k knock off game where a lone human had to fight space orcs. Then they made a game where it was Empure Versus Orcs as one of their first independant games after leaving Interplay. GW already had a company on contract making games like Dark Omen and various other pc games. GW told Blizzard thanks but no thanks they had one already and that BLizzard needed practice as it was a bad rough draft.

Blizzard said Frak you and decided to then make their own liscense. They also had hte nerve to name it Warcraft, thus it would come alphabetically before Warhammer on the shelf once released (they pulled a Megadeath). So both companies went back and forth with law suits for years and years. Blizzards defense is that Warhammer borrows from traditional fantasy writting and Tolkien. That went well till Starcraft....

Starcraft is tht largest IP ripoff I can personally name that was never caught or punished aside from like Coke VS Pepsi. Anywho I digress. Basically the two companies eventually settled outside of court and came to an agreement. Now they see each other as rivals in almost every franchise because Blizzard thinks they can now compete with minis, board games, cards, and novels that Warhammer/GW have been doing for 30 years.

I think what is an annoyance to me is due to Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Starcraft, and now WOW have become so more identifiable than GW product and children keep thinking GW ripped them off. :/ Infact when Blizzard slipped in that line to gryphon riders in WC3 that made me really ticked off lol... "Like my Warhammer? It cost me 40K!"

How much I used to hate Blizzard I would almost believe they sabotaged the printing of RT so they can shine more buzz about Starcraft 2.

Terminus_Est said:

No they don't, silly!

Just look at the orCs in warhammer fantasy. They too reproduce through fungus spores, like the way Orcs are supposed to reproduce.

And you can't rightfully call them "boyz" if there were a bunch of Ork women in the group now could you?

*snort* Ork/Orc women, what a preposterous idea.

I actually like the idea of Orcs reproducing through a means less comic than fungal spores, but hey, it's a very minor difference all in all. If you look back to the original WC1, Orcs and Humans, the Orc grunts would've been horribly at home in the Warhammer universe, the resemblance was beyond uncanny, and this persisted up until WC3 when they started utterly ruining the Orc race by making them into noble samurai (which was, on its own, a cool idea, but did ruin the evil sinister appeal of the orcs utterly). Communing with daemons, necromancy etc were not features of Warhammer Orcs though, which did give the Warcraft race a bit of originality and depth

Terminus_Est said:

Just curious, where have you heard all this? I've heard at least five variants on this story, and never any proof for any of them. If you have a good source, I would be intrigued.

I don't hate Blizzard, but I do hate the morons who think GW didn't do most of their concepts first.

RocketPropelledGrenade said:

Yeah, I've heard at least three variantions myself on the Dawn of War forums and once on the CNCNZ forums. Honestly I think this is a case of a lie being repeated until it became true. No one's mentioned or referenced any third party arbitrating this (and frankly, something that big would definitely have a lawyer putting his fingerprints all over it.)

I also agree with you RPG. I've found a few people knowledgable about 40k but embarassingly ignorant of the science-fiction that came before and inspired it. I mean I know it's not THAT good compared to other military sci-fi but I thought Starship Troopers was better known since it was probably the first time anyone ever had the idea of future soldiers fighting in modern reimaginings of ancient platemail.

Hodgepodge.... have you read Tolkein? Warhammer, Warcraft, and D&D all share incredible similarities to Lord of the Rings.

Psion said:

...And Tolkein from The Worm Ouroboros, by E.R. Eddison and Norse mythology and, and, and...

/All that's old is new again

Cervantes3773 said:

Exactly. This discussion was going nowhere before it started.

Tolkien also wrote at a time when virtually every Englishman would have been familiar with Wagner's operas, which share many ideas and themes with Tolkien's work. Of course, Tolkien was professionally familiar with Wagner's own sources and produced his own take on them.

Robert E. Howard (Conan) was also writing at around the same time, as was his friend Lovecraft. Howard framed his themes more as a matter of civilization vs barbarism. Michael Moorcock, who pioneered the abstraction of order vs chaos rather than good vs evil in fantasy, was writing more in response to Howard than Tolkien. Moorcock's most famous character, Elric, was written to be the complete opposite of Conan: a pale, sickly, and thin ruler of an inherently chaotic civilization who was a master sorcerer.

(Interestingly enough, Gary Gygax, one of the principle writers of early D&D, claimed to not have read The Lord of the Rings at all).

Both early Warcraft and Starcraft show specific signs of being influenced by Warhammer. That not to say that they aren't their own products, especially now that Blizzard has had time to develop their properties further. It's close enough to make the idea that Blizzard set out to make a game that could be a Warhammer game plausible, anyhow.

Which is to say everything ocmes from something or somewhere, that originality is dead. It is true many themes and concepts are borrowed heavily all the time and given more time things do take on a life of their own. So that being said.. As for proof I really have none except being around at the time. The public, including myself just generally accepted that as the answer. The rumor as I heard it was told by corp level employees within GW. However after a few years GW stopped its employees from ever stating anything bad about Blizzard openly to customers. I do know for a fact that there were "out of court agreements" but I do not know what they entail. It could be anything honestly. Basically if both companies preyed on each other well.....

However if it wasn't for Blizzard's spin doctors you got to admit SC and WC are way too close to 40k or WH despite sharing common ancestry threads. As well as Blizzard blatantly using the line I qouted before, or Chaos orc (later renamed Fel Orcs in patches and lore). Haha or marines in heavy armor firing depleated uranium rounds.. Least Blizzard made them penal colonists hooked on drugs to explain courage and strength to make them different than the iconic space marines.

Personally I think 40k and Warhammer were much more inspired by Robert E. Howard than Tolkien. I've read everyone of their books, and Howard's has a distinct taste of "grim darkness" which is parallel in spirit. It gets stronger in his later writing culminating in it's full glory until his eventual suicide. Why does fate always take the good writers and still leave us the crappy ones?

Because Genius dances on the razor's edge of insanity?

If you went to GenCon without wearing riot gear and stun guns, you can't complain that you didn't get any exclusive merch.

And anyway, Rogue Trader is coming out really soon! Patience dudes!

Mazinkaiser said:

QFT.

Mazinkaiser said:

I went the route of staying home and employing former federal marshals to slip into the Con and snag me a copy direct from a sister sororitas.

Sending minions to do your dirty work is also a valid tactic.