It seemed to me at the time, they just wanted to capitalize on the popularity of Dune II and the the small and emerging RTS market. Not much in the game was original besides the theme and setting and played pretty much like Dune II. It's funny to think though, at the time, we also all thought of Warcraft as a simple Dune II clone and and Blizzard as minor gaming company, only capable of making clones of other games. Finally, we all thought, there is another game like Dune II, and we proceeded to play this game to death as well. I remember buying this game after playing Dune II to death.
