> It’s surprising now to think what might have happened had Blizzard not controlled the intellectual property rights for the Warcraft universe — it’s highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today.

This seems a very important observation. Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars etc.) never managed to really transition seriously into computer games (a few hits but lots of misses and certainly no dominant series like warcraft and starcraft). I think the licencers of these worlds have been guilty of being far too greedy over the years as a general rule, and hurt their own pockets through doing so...

Also - great article. I loved playing Warcraft 1, and despite the fact that the 'RTS race' soon exploded and left it in the rear-vision mirror, it was still incredibly important in defining the genre... (as a side note, most of the other Blizzard games around this time were great too - must have been a great team).