>But the biggest problem is that the vast number of people who are just
>unable to shut their traps!

heh. I have done a lot (really a whole lot) with events in That Other Game
(tm) and in order to succeed events have to work /with/ the chaos of online
populations rather than against them. Giving out large amounts of
information in game is a Bad Idea, particularly in EQ with it's textbox
format. If anyone were to ask /me/ how to do it to maximize everyones fun
(*grin* not that anyone would, unless maybe they knew about the Napa/GL/SP
Tengu and didn't hate him) they would have all the backstory and buildup
occur on webpages with message boards for those interested and only have a
few key events play out in-game. GMs should be able (and have full
authority) to temporarily mute anyone (while the offender is in the zone and
only for the duration of the event) and "players" in the story should get a
different color text.
Since they are not going to want to run the event simultaniously on all
servers there could be a quest set up for those who want the event to happen
on their server, complete the quest and get one more vote for your server to
have the event. That way you could also generally limit it to folks of the
right level for the quest.
At any rate, it's not a perfect system by a long shot, just an idea, but I
think it's better than "GM shows up/kills a bunch of people/spams
content/deals with jerks/treasure hunt for quest item".

Tszaaz/Tengu