What about to do something constructive? I can imagine some crafting Living Word event where the players with crafting skills would use the skills to rebuild some destroyed city or something… or maybe to build some device to launch an counterattack on enemies, say some giant airship or so.
There could be some combat involved, too, like fighting strong mobs for access to nodes with event specific materials needed for the construction (something like in WvW).
Players might also get crafting materials as reward, and improve their crafting skills while helping on the event.
Since devs love refugees, the plot might be about creating a gigantic airship needed to evacuate people from some endangered land and it might continue with another event where the players would escort the refugees to the airship landing zone… or something like that, and then to help them to create some kind of a base and weapons for them and finally to support them to win their land back.
