I have played a lot of different online games and seen quite a many different
one-shot events that happen during some special real life holiday. The main
point of them is always to have fun and to make something different out of the
usual grind.

The rewards, however, are never the main incentive to participate in these
events. The rewards are usually consumables or gear that makes you character
appear different etc. In Bat good example of something like that is a cool
holzmark or some healing candy. There can also be some gear rewards that are
really good for your average solo/casual player but never items that are
regarded as best-in-slot, or even close to that.

I don't think the problem is that you can abuse secondaries get the rewards
too easily, I think the problem is that the rewards are so incredibly good
that people are willing to use that abuse to get the items for their main
characters. Hell, people would do pretty much anything to get those items as
they will become ungettable after the event. This makes the attitude towards
the event totally awkward. People just grind and grind to get every possible
reward and then they get frustrated and the whining ensues. Instead of being
happy to get some new stuff, people who missed out on some single item feel
like they got shafted when they spent tens of hours trying to get everything.

The overpowered rewards are also a balancing issue. Someone might have used
hundreds of hours to make points to get some expensive item from eq-society.
You can imagine how frustrated that person will be when every single player in
game gets a better one for free (ie. quaranteed if you just spend enough
time). Whats the point of killing difficult eq mobs when you get equal or even
better gear for pretty much free on one weekend of the year?

Also on a less general scale, I think using the rig slot for the rewards was a
bad decision. That slot is new and there is not much gear for it that has
stats. It could have been a nice way to make people run less common eqmobs by
giving them some +stat rigs. Now the opportunity is wasted as everyone is
running +8stat rig with them.