IC, the event was a disaster (from the empires viewpoint anyway).
OOC, I think it pretty much as well as the first empire -> 0.0 event could go. And considering the poor choices made by CCP, it actually went pretty good. On top, that whole storyline of the growing gap between empires and capsuleers is actually (although unintentionally) quite nicely underlined by this event, in my opinion.
Now, some of what CCP wrote down does make me wonder if they know the game they've created and that worries me a bit, but hey...

. I guess I've learned not to expect miracles from them.