I've never played EQ, but from what I understand, it's a lot of downtime, and the pace is slower.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. By making this game fast paced, they also attracted a lot of of the 'quake' mentality.
Those uber d00ds can level to their hearts' content and kill and level and tweak, etc, etc forever until L200. But what is there really?
The game is fast paced, and I love that. But when someone says to the guild that "I didn't pay $13/month to do <XXX roleplaying thing>" just because it takes time away from their monster killing, it saddens me . Killing monsters and such is fun, but when an event starts, I'm out of that mission or hunting ground and in my Yalm faster than you can say "fried leet with chocolate sauce".
Turning this post around to show how it relates to the thread topic :
Storyline events are going to be a bit less action-packed than constand mob killing. And because there are more of the 'quaker' crowd in this game than not, it's hard to get a core of people who can make events successful. People just need to realize that events arent going to happen every day, and every event isn't going to be a mad PvP event. It doesn't mean that it can't be fun.
Basically, what Wynd said. If you are not willing to get informed and stay informed about the story, then you aren't going to see the forest for the trees.