The idea is great but the implementation is poor. They either need to get rid of it completely or just tone down the intervals in which the events are activating. If they get rid of them more people will be able to participate more quickly and since they are called GROUP events it makes sense. Second, they could put at minimum a 5 minute delay on events, or play around with that idea, so that events do not trigger as often and allow players an opportunity to traverse the map more effectively.
On the idea of making NPCs more useful is a complicated issue. They can not make the NPCs strong enough to fend off the event itself or else it defeats the purpose of having players participate. If they ratio is 1 to 1 per enemy then the event itself becomes useless. They have to make them stronger. I agree with that. But 1 to 1 is just too high of a ratio.