Does Blizzard copy Warhammer/Warhammer 40k ?

[baajimyriam]

Warcraft really looks like Warhammer and SC like 40K.

Why Blizzard never had problem with laws?

[Wise Windu]

Because they changed it enough. It was confirmed at some point that Blizzard was originally making a Warhammer game with Warcraft, before Games Workshop pulled the license. So they had to change it slightly to make it work.

It was thought also that SC was supposed to be a 40k game, and the license was pulled for that as well.

[Donnie Danko]

its actually the othher way around

[Nugel]

Nope Wise Windu is right, blizzard created a warhammer pc game with the races of eldar tyranids and the space marines, than Games workshop took their license back.
This was the birth of starcraft and maybe the worst decision made by GW company wise.

[Dagordae]

Actually, both are base off of much older scifi. Neither series has created much new.
Warhammer did copy Starcraft's design for the tyranid. Before Starcraft came out they were very very diffrent.
Spacehulk was the first appearance, and that was just the genestealers. They were the usual xenomorph knockoffs that were everywhere in that decade.
Then they were just a minor race that got a tiny codex. It was mostly made up of centaurs and tiny fat guys.
Here's what they looked like when they first came out in 2ed
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y163/schepphimself/TyranidWarriors.jpg
http://www.3plusplus.net/2011/11/rogue-trader-tyranid-army/
Yeah... plagarism is a good thing sometimes.

[Insano-Man]

It doesn't much matter to me who did what where. So far as I'm concerned, Warhammer 40,000 tries and does a reasonable job at maintaining its niche of "everything is terrible". StarCraft does the best job it can in depriving itself of uniqueness at every turn.

It's funny, though. Both Dawn of War and StarCraft started off pretty well in their stories. Then Dawn of War II hit and whatever originality Relic had imparted on the series' storyline vanished into thin air. There was a reasonable setup in StarCraft: Brood War for something interesting, then StarCraft 2 hit and I wanted to play baseball with my own skull.

Unfortunately for StarCraft, Warhammer 40,000 extends far beyond just Dawn of War, and I wouldn't be speaking from Games Workshop's camp if it was entirely without merit.

[Basharria]

The original WarCraft was in development, with inspiration from Warhammer. Some people at Blizzard wanted to obtain the rights for a Warhammer game for brand recognition and to boost sales, but most of Blizzard didn't want to do that.

WarCraft ended up being quite popular, as we all know. WarCraft II was even more popular, and StarCraft followed in its footsteps. World of Warcraft came out and the rest is history.

WarCraft at its time of creation had as much in common with Warhammer as it had with Lord of the Rings, truthfully. To call WarCraft a ripoff of Warhammer is almost a moot point--they're all fantasy series that borrow tons from even older things. Space Hulk, Space Marines and Tyranids are clearly very heavily inspired by Aliens, for example.