Yeah, you're right to highlight warcraft although I don't think it's a clean line with Warcraft between dune 2 and c&c. C&C was probably around 2 years into development by the time Warcraft came out, and my assumption is most of the actual game design was pretty finalised by that point. Though I'm sure some minor influences made their way in, I don't think Warcraft massively affected the kind of game we got in the end.
But yeah that's not to diminish the contribution of warcraft to the genre, there's loads of games that followed copying the Warcraft style of RTS, even as part of the c&c series in the end with Generals.
Towards the end of the decade Total Annihilation would be released and it's modern day fan made remake, Beyond All Reason, is really good. Sad there's no campaign though, I really loved the TA campaign
gonna be real, WC1 was not a huge title at the time. I think a lot of people look back, rightly, at WC3 being one of the greatest RTS of all time and then think the whole series was lauded at release, but Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was just okay.