++ The random nonsense is gone, being able to plan out and finish the event again takes away a lot of stress and FOMO from it. A change that is as unexpected as it is welcome.
+ Being able to progress at almost the same pace with both an endgame city and some progressing cities (Orcs and Wood Elves respectively) suggests that the quests' balance has been done well this time around, which is no small feat.
+/- No more scratch-lottery nonsense, back to chests - BUT chests retain the unneeded nerf (without unlimited quests, players are no longer able to use time boosts to get hundreds of quests done, so the nerfs now feel uncalled for, especially those that didn't affect one's performance in events, for instance getting 3 KPs from the 41 chests was already rather frustrating, and getting 1 now feels like a bad joke). Still, the pros override the cons overall, for the lottery was just utter garbage and I hope we'll never see it again.
+/- The artwork is excellent as usual, but the per-tile efficiency of the buildings is very disappointing. What's the point of having gorgeous-looking stuff if it's not worth placing in the city?
- Nerfs to the daily prizes are no longer needed since, again, the quest are not endless anymore, and they're inconsistent. 30 KPs are still there, whereas time boosts and PPs are still nerfed. Doesn't make any sense to me.
-- The stash outpost costing more and lasting more than the event itself is a shameless scam and whoever came up with the idea should feel ashamed (although it's a scientifically proven fact that the absolute lack of shame is a prerequisite in order to get a job in any marketing department, so lamenting over this is rather moot, but I'm still gonna do it just because).
(- WWs on day 1 is a shameless money-grabbing scheme, unless there's gonna be another WW day towards the end I can see a throng of very angry people. If, however, there's gonna be another WW day, this point is to be ignored.)
Overall, this is still a huge improvement over the last Winter's Event, and even some previous events. It's not perfect, but it's definitely a big step back towards the right direction (that is, the unmaking of changes that weren't needed in the first place). Don't fix what's not broken, don't use the playerbase as guinea pigs, if the formula is right "more of the same is good" (just ask anyone who still plays games from 10-20 years ago because the devs changed the formula and ruined many beloved series), yadda yadda yadda.