The Scarab Lord

Destiny 2’s game director talks about World of Warcraft’s most ambitious world event ever.

- Steven Messner

When Destiny 2 director Luke Smith sends an email, his signature reads a little differently than you might expect. “Luke Smith, Scarab Lord” – an honorific given to just a few hundred WoW players out of the tens of millions who have played since it launched. It’s a title Smith came to own when his tauren Shaman, Aganathyre, stood before thousands of players on the Eredar server one fateful Saturday morning in spring 2006 and rang an ancient gong.

“Aganathyre, Champion of the Bronze Dragon flight, has rung the Scarab Gong,” read a broadcast to every player in Azeroth in that moment. “The ancient gates of Ahn’Qiraj open, revealing the horrors of a forgotten war...”

ENEMY AT THE GATES 

In 2006, Blizzard launched a world event so ambitious that, to date, nothing has eclipsed it. With many of Azeroth’s original threats defeated, players’ attention turned to Silithus, a land on the doorstep of the dormant insectoid empire of Ahn’Qiraj. To open the gates and unleash the monsters (and loot) within, players had to contribute to a war effort that required cooperation on a scale never seen in World of Warcraft before or since. It wasn’t just words in a quest window — all of Azeroth came together to fight the Qiraji.