When you see an Historical Questline announcement, you have a couple of days to start prepapring for it or if you fellow beta than much earlier. The majority I would say prepare themselves before the event starts and even manage to finish in one day.
If the key is to prepare for the event, such as by reading a cheat sheet of the quest sequence, doesn't that remove the 'challenge' of the event? I mean, if you know the quest-line in advance, it just becomes a case of organising collections and setting off scouts. A chore more than a challenge, and this from a guy who enjoys making the occasional spreadsheet...
Shouldn't you be able to complete an event by taking each quest in turn, each being a surprise to you as you advance? I know we have that style with the seasonal quests, 1 new one each day, but shouldn't the general principle apply to all events or would this be too hard to achieve with short events, with so many players across a wide range of advancement in the game?
For full disclosure, I personally find the events on FoE fairly well balanced, though I am an (almost) end game player on my main world so quite adaptable. Compared to Elvenar, where the last event had 3 late quests involving multiple 1 and 2 day collections, the balance is very good. FoE also doesn't make you do 99 5 minute productions. Yay for no RSI!