I personally enjoyed it. I made a full account leading up to it and then did 14 characters a day with my friends.

I was disappointed with the lack of items available (early info sounded like it would be more) and the group finder issues had me pretty annoyed some nights but over all it was a good laugh with friends and I got some neat stuff from it.

I healed and tanked dungeons for the first time, so that was fun.

And I got some free stuff, so that is cool.

It was meh, too much trash in the loot table. I got some really good stuff and the complete opposite.

Liked it! Brought people together, met a lot of nice people.

Meh, it convinced me that I need a break from this game tbh

Six out of my eight characters were already tanks or healers.Since I'm also on PC/NA, I had no trouble finding groups aside from sometimes having to accept, accept, accept, accept before we finally formed a group.

Good Things
Everyone was very pleasant and willing to learn mechanics. I had Darkshade Caverns II, Imperial City Prison, and White Gold Tower (twice), and even if we took a death or wiped to a mechanic, everyone listened to how to do it and we pulled it off the second time.
I'm really happy that ZOS changed the difficulty on Random Normal Dungeons to better account for level. It seems to have worked well, since all the groups I had were able to complete their content. - No more level 10s in WGT, yay!


Observations
Fake tanks (DPS with no taunt) are really obvious. However, they work well in groups where everyone is self-sufficient. When not every group members is, fake tanks make my healer's jobs much harder.

Bad things
RNG Loot boxes that aren't crown crates so I can't even get crown gems out of the time I spent. Oh, and a single lockpick? Most of us aren't broke newbies, ZOS. If you were trying to make sure we've got lockpicks for WGT, we need those at the start of the dungeon, not the end...

Suggestions for the next time you do this (because there probably will be a next time):

• Be clear and specific on your promotional materials. It was very unclear when the information came out that rewards were attached to the Premium Random dungeon. It was very unclear that meant a 20-hour cooldown, and that if you did yours before the event you wouldn't get a reward. It was very unclear that you only needed to defeat the final boss (the right decision there, good call, ZOS). It was also unclear what time the event would end. Yes, I know the end time was all over the promotional information but when you've got an incorrect timer in-game, I'd say that deserved a clear and obvious correction.
• RNG Loot Boxes need a change. I'm aware that with any such event, the RNG rewards are going to contain a large amount of [useless stuff]. Its the equivalent of winning $1 in the lottery, we all know that's a thing. But a single lockpick? And the issue with duplicate rewards? Something needs to change there.
• Be proactive with your maintenance and bug fixes. All of the major bugs that hit group finder were stuff that players already knew about. This wasn't a new failure, the group finder broke in exactly the same ways its been breaking for the last couple months just with increased demand. I hope you got the data you need in order to fix it, but next time, I strongly suggest that you be upfront about expected problems and how we can report them.

Suggestions for the New Life Festival
The experiences of this event and the Midyear Mayhem event earlier this year suggest that preparation is key. Last year, I remember that little section of Eastmarch near Kynesgrove being overloaded and laggy with players. Perhaps you should prepare for an influx.

I got Junk, Junk and more junk but I was expecting that because of the crappy RNG system ZOS has in place. It also was a poorly put together event. I hope ZOS listened to the numerous complaints and makes some changes if they choose to run this event again.

On a positive note I was able to level one of my characters to Level 10 in the Undaunted Skill Line so it was not a total waste of my time.