Yea. I think I would personally prefer a queue system. At least I would have my characters on the same server and can just wait it out.
What's the difference between that and doing the exact same thing while in the overflow server? Take it as a queue with a much more interesting "please wait" screen.
They eliminate the need to find a specific NPC to get and finish the quest. They're streamlining the process which is nice. Still the same kill so many of these things, collect this, or defend this, but without the hassle of beginning/ending the quest.
If you're talking about hearts, they indeed are not much different than quests; they're there so that people have some guarantee that content will be up. Well, with a huge difference; you get 3-5 tasks, so you can pick the ones you like most, or mix and match (there's also quite more variation than in most MMOs; some have you carrying food while evading hungry rabbits, or shooing hungry rabbits away from other players, or playing golem chess...).
If you're talking about events, however, I have to strongly disagree. For one, it's never "kill X, an arbitrary number, of these mobs that are continually respawning but doing pretty much nothing". The closest there's to that is "kill all of these mobs that have taken over this place". You then kill them, all of them, or at least most of them. They don't respawn continuously and magically, the ones you kill are dead for the duration of the event, and if any remain at all, they flee the zone. Follow them, by the way, and often they'll lead you to their lair; they don't despawn into thin air. I followed a pack of rampaging minotaurs all the way to a different subzone of the map I was on!
There's also the "protect me while I do this", "kill this one boss", etc, but for me, none felt so arbitrary as "kill 12 of these monsters"; you also feel the sense of purpose and connection so much more by having them have a direct result 90% of the time, be it another event or whatever. The NPC doesn't stay there for you to finish the quest chain when you please; he/she'll go ahead with or without you. Also, not having to talk to an NPC means that it's never "oh, you killed 12 of them before? too bad, you should have talked to me first".
Finally, most events have an impact on the world, but people are usually too busy looking for the next hear t or event to notice it. Heck, I did the "clean the lake of tar elementals" one a few times during the betas, and only today I've realized that the lake was murky and opaque before and it becomes crystalline clear when you finish.
At this point I'm not sure what people expect of a videogame. It seems there's a problem if a game is in any way suggesting the player to fight or kill stuff. Well, I WANT to fight; the battle system is very good and the game should play to its strengths.
