Gates of Ahn'Qiraj Event Background

The gates were opened on 5th of January 2008 by a Paladin Mercus, at the time member of the guild Athanatoi. This sparked a lot of issues, drama and plenty of sparks flying around across the realm as some disagreed with the eligibility of the Scepter Holder for something as prestigious as the title of Scarab Lord on a Role-Playing realm to go to a non-active roleplayer and not someone who has been settled more in to the community. The criticism also flied on the event pre-announcements times and lack of organisation in regards of the event from Athanatoi which were well founded but some slighlty overreacted.
==Clearing up the issues and misconceptions==
Gates were opened at 4 AM in the morning.
This is incorrect. In fact gates were opened at 12:00 server time. (Could have been 14:00 too my memory isn't crystal clear on exact time. Feel free to edit to correct format if you have a log. The finishing event took place at 23:00-24:00)
The Scepter Holder transferred here and opened the gates straight off with no-cooperation or information given to the realm.
Incorrect. Mercus transferred to Sha'tar three months before the gates were opened with intention to retire from raiding and casually play on a more relaxed server with some former guildies that came here before him. 
The only two parts which was not done on Sha'tar was the reputation grind which was done in Vanilla WoW on realm called Darksorrow after the Gates were opened there with assistance of Mercus' guild there (Lorekeepers and later Unknown Immunity) and his friends and The Red Scepter Shard chain which was done in Vanilla WoW in Darksorrow while being member of the guild Unknown Immunity. Everything else including but not limited to killing hundreds of Dragonkin for the Green Shard chain, procuring Elementium Ore, and doing everything else up to the Opening Event was done on Sha'tar with Athanatoi and other guilds or individuals who assisted in the events that were publicly advertised in the means avaliable to the guild.
There were other people working on the quest chain on both Horde and Alliance who were native to Sha'tar and should have priority on doing so.
The gates were closed for almost a year when they were opened. In fact if my information is not incorrect the gates (at the time it was checked with the Game Master) would have opened on their own on 17th January 2008 (One year after the server opened) at midnight. This is 12 days after they were actually opened. They had all the time in the world to open it had they wanted to. The attempts to open the gates from Mercus started only a month or so before the actual opening as it was impossible to predict how long it would take to get all the Nightmare Fragments for the Green Shard which at then still did not have 100% droprate. 
Mercus also asked various people who expressed interest in opening the gates if they would be interested in joined opening (who were native to Sha'tar and have started the quest chain) and while the interest was expressed it was later dropped from them. The others who were on the path to the knowledge at the time were still very early on the reputation grind, just finished the reputation grind or were still leveling their characters to do the same.
While this on its own does not entitle Mercus to the scepter more or less than those people but all the attempts were made to coordinate it as much as possible through contact with guilds on both Alliance and Horde (the officers of guilds) before starting to work on event in Athanatoi. 
Since the pre-preparation events for opening the gates. The Maws event for Blue Scepter Chain and the Eranikus Event for Green Scepter Chain are World Announcements, others had the chance to track them as well - and had time to catch up to the opening event before the gates were opened. Rewards and titles were open to everyone during the initial opening hour + 10 hour war. None were claimed.
In respect, the gathering effort for all the materials required to open the gates were only finished a month before the gates were opened, therefore there was at least a month time for any natives who would be as far or further than Mercus in the chain to complete it beforehand.
Organization was horrible and announcement about opening wasn't made far enough in advance.
This was well based criticism. Server was not given much advance time of exact opening times. (48 hours in advance for first prediction and then 24 hours in advance for exact time and date.) As well as world event announcements a week in advance with rough date approximations.
The reasons behind not being able to give exact time and dates were down to inability to accurately know when the quests will be finished. The droprate was so un-reliable that it was impossible to predict when it would be finished - in fact it could not have been finished for the announced dates.
The total time that Mercus, The Athanatoi and other people who wanted to help farmed the Green Scepter shards for example took over 200 hours in total on Sha'tar. In which after about 190 hours there was only 1/4 Nightmare Fragments to show for. 3 fragments were all recieved in last 48 hours by stroke of immense luck and the persistence of Mercus and people who wanted to help. (Was over 80 people changing over in 'shifts' helping Mercus farm the dragonkin for example.)
Similarly in grind for Goggles in Molten Core and Books and Elemntium in other places took quite significant amount of time and due to RNG of Droprates it was unable to predict when they would be finished exactly. Thus early announcements were not able to be made.
Regardless Athanatoi's Officers and Guild Leader (Senya and Astra respectivly) each issued apologetic statements following the event apologizing and explaining this same thing on Athanatoi's website for those who had issues and the reception of the statements was overall well accepted.
Overall the event's reception was positive and regardless of the long and loud drama thread on forums the supportive chunk of people was significantly higher than those who were opposing it - even if they were the louder minority.