I've never actually been to a player event though been invited to a few, my opinion is that they're generally lame, if I want to see new people I got to coronet with my master doctor tag on and all of a sudden everyone wants to be my friend. I don't think a fireworks display would work because when I was a master artisan I made all of the fireworks and tested them, it was agreed that they're all as unimpressive as each other
Every PvP event I've seen so far has died on it's ass, the fact that most of us are crafters and not PvPers means that it would really be a huge hit anyways, especially as we haven't wasted faction points on a totally useless base and turrets so people can exploit them for 10 minutes until they're destroyed.