Well, you can eventually - any event tickets you don't use right now carry over to the next group of events, which I think are in the summer - but yeah, I get being discouraged by that. (I probably shouldn't tell you about the Summerset event that was just in September or so, huh?)
That's as may be, and once I get there I'll probably wander off to other games. However, I've been playing for 7 months now and it's only been with the Halloween event's XP boosts that I've even got *one* character anywhere remotely near endgame-level. There's still so much questline I haven't done, still like six areas I haven't even been to yet, never mind the DLC questlines...
It works for me, and it's a bonus that it's (as MMOs go) so cheap. Sorry it was a drag for you.