Starcraft and Warhammer40K

Some people think starcraft is a clearly a rip off of wahrammer 40k. There are some influences, but to call it a rip off as a matter of fact is unfair.
It is a misconception that starcraft was supposed to be w40k game (or at least there is no evidence for this). It was the original warcraft that was supposed to be a warhammer fantasy game, we can see it on the design of the orcs. By the time of starcraft development there was no hope of collaboration between blizzard and games workshop.
== My unstructured thoughts ==
There are some clear inspirations, but starcraft is way more differentiated than people pretend to. Calling tyranids very similar to the zerg might be true today but I wouldn't say it was true in 1998. For example people use the ravener as an example of how blizzard came up with the hydralisk but the ravener was invented in 2001 so if anything it was the other way around. If you look at how tyranids were in the 2nd edition you would see they are pretty different from the zerg. The only things terran copied was the design for the marine and I think the ghost too, but the lore is completely different. And the comparison of protoss and eldar doesn't hold any water at all, ancient aliens with psionic powers is a pretty common trope and other then this they don't have any further comparisons. Also a strategy game with a faction that is further divided to subfactions each with their specialties? That is definitely an completely unique copyright worthy idea. (sarcasm)