Coming into the Mabar event this year, having never participated before, I was conditioned to expect a couple of things.

1. Server-crushing, raid-killing lag.

2. Little to no ability to control who I raided with.

3. Scarcity of specific components (Lich Dust).

At the end of the event though, on the back of 5 for 5 successful completions and plenty of non-Mabar related quest running, my opinion of the event was raised noticeably.

1. I didn't get hit with lag, in or out of the event.
It's easy to say that I am just an exception; but the fact that there is an exception is superior to a server-wide blanket of lag death, isn't it? I found the CC to be a laggier event then Mabar, on the whole.

2. Creating a group prior to the raid opening and coordinating entering allowed me to get my party in the same instance as long as we were in the same level range. Yeah, having only half-feedback from the minimap is a down-grade from every other raid, but it is better than it was in the past, neh? By aggressively coordinating on the general chat and dispersing my party-members to the various locations, I was able to ensure a minimum of coverage that got me the win every time and in a quick manner to boot.

3. Running as a 17-18 (I leveled up during the event, doing other things), I had a fairly hard time generating Lich Dust. In large groups with 20s, they would spawn, but I wasn't guaranteed a dust from a kill. On my own I had a hard time soloing them and they were very rare. In the end, I pulled one dust throughout the event and bought two others for reasonable prices. Just how much platinum is an epic item worth? Exactly. Scarce though it may have been, I was able to buy it with platinum earned off of a non-capped toon, not needing to dip into my main characters stash of PP.

Yeah, Mabar could have been better. I'm guessing that next year, it will be, as we have been promised. And I suspect that it was a lot better then it was last year. Isn't that how things should be? Better every time? Hell yeah.