I don't know much of anything about Dave Hargrave or his inspirations for Arduin but the art and content suggest Hargrave's inspirations (or at least his artists inspirations) were much closer to mine and my friends' early influences than the likes of Gygax, Arneson, or Barker.
I had read a few works off Appendix N in the first couple of years I played (some Howard, some Lieber. Tolkien) but it would probably be well into the 90s before fantasy comic books, art by Frazetta, Vallejo, and Whelan, etc., and animation weren't bigger influences that literary fantasy.
The things I see in Greyhawk now that I think were informed by Gygax's interest in historical wargaming would have been over my head when I first encountered it, and were not something I would have sought to add to a setting. Barker's world has a bit of Sword & Planet vibe but would have felt too bound by propriety and protocol. Greenwood's Realms seem geared toward trilogy novel so of play, but Tolkien's was the only trilogy I was interested in at that point. Hargrave, on the other hand, had insect people like Bug from Micronauts and Amazon warriors of the sort that were all over comics and seem de rigueur for fantasy worlds.
I can't say that (beyond the art) I've ever been particularly interested in Arduin. I came to it too late. Had I discovered it around age 12-13, it might have been a different story.
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I remember a friend complaining bitterly about how Arduin introduced too many (and I quote) "playable freakshow races" to use compared to the limited options in early D&D. I haven't seen the guy in decades, but even by the 80s the proliferation of PC species was well under way, and I'd love know what he thinks of D&D in 2025, which has gotten to the point where I'm a little uncomfortable with the full gamut of choices available.
Weirdly, he had no problems with Talislanta and its plethora of PC options. According to him it was okay because the game was "supposed to be weird" - I guess unlike D&D?
People draw weird lines.
If you look at the settings implied by Appendix N, especially the list of most immediate influences and Gary's own preference for Howardian Sword & Sorcery/Heroic Fantasy versus Tolkeinian High Fantasy, the only "proper" player character race was human. Tolkien's works added the traditional three -- dwarves, elves, and halflings -- while Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" had very different interpretations of dwarves and elves.
And there were many players, then as now, who preferred Heroic Fantasy Adventure to High Fantasy Quest style games and setting assumptions. It was not until Dragonlance that the High Fantasy Fantasyfolk Quest style of play overtook the Humanocentric Heroic Fantasy Adventure style. Prior to that you were not generally playing "heroes," you were playing picaros.
Hargrave came out of left field with his everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that literally blended every possible science fantasy element into one campaign setting. It did so in a way that was unabashedly "kludgy," as the background of Arduin was "all these doors into time and space opened, they all met here, and everyone fought for thousands of years until the current state of equilibrium." I could see why that se Gary's teeth on edge from a literary perspective; Gary remained solidly "old school" in his literary influences throughout his life.
Talislanta, on the other hand, had a much more comprehensive and unified setting; it was a patchwork of different peoples, each with their own backgrounds and histories. It made more internal sense, unlike Arduin, which feels like you took the toys from a dozen different kids and threw them all together. D&D5.24 is very much like Arduin in that way.
Dave Hargrave lost the battle but won the war!
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