Given the trouble with mass scale events, I’ve been thinking: with culling making sure only about 25 people are actually displayed at a time, does it really make sense to make these events real mass events? Invisible monsters, too many spell effects and similar simply aren’t drawn, leading to… surprise deaths, unexploited options and so on.
As a mater of fact, wouldn’t splitting events into say 25 man instances and then using “stage magic” to imply there are many more people just out of sight actually achieve a more epic feel? (send players on separate attack runs, add a glimpse of large battle at times, use fog of war creatively…)