History Characters / Warhammer40000LeaguesOfVotann

Both Warcarft and Starcraft were proposed to GW as tie in I Ps. According to Patrick Wyatt the co-funder of blizzard approached GW for a WHFB tie in and was rejected. However after the success of both Warcraft and Warcraft 2, Blizzard once again approached GW for a tie in. They presented a pre-alpha version comparable to the earliest E3 alpha demo build of SC 2 (where the Siege Tanks resemble Space Marine Predators, the "Nightmarish Invaders" resemble Tyranids in color and overal aesthetic, etc) and were rejected. again. This is why there are so many similarities in design. Of particular note is that Bob Fitch, lead designer of Blizzard from 1992 to present, claims he had "never heard of 40k until SC 1 released and people started that rumor", despite him also being head of a team that was explicitly working on a Warhammer 40,000 universe inspired game, Nomads. Nomads was intended to be a video game copied largely wholesale from Necromunda, and when Nomads was cancelled it was EXPLICITLY one of several games whose features and dev team went to work on Starcraft 1 (Along with several others, such as an XCOM clone). This claim comes from Dave Craddick's books and can be corroborated here: https://www.shacknews.com/article/76467/author-blizzards-nomad-gave-way-to-world-of-warcraft. Of further note is that the lead designer of Necromunda (and 3rd edition 40k), Andy Chambers, ALSO WORKED FOR BLIZZARD as a consultant on SC 2. And even Blizzard's own retrospectives acknowledge that the dev team was "looking at anything sci fi for inspiration. So while Blizzard employees for some reason publicly claim there was never any affiliation, there's evidence that the explicit denials are lies and that Blizzard WAS developing games explicitly based on GW IP

This is just flatly wrong. Starcraft was never intended to be Warhammer 40K - warcraft was intended to be warhammer fantasy

Just adding to this. I wonder if the similarity was intentional on GW's part?