Midwinter Event not work for me

The old Midwinter quest got deleted from all of my characters who still had it.

All characters who already had the quest in the past can not do this quest again.
Is that intended, or does “looking into this issue” mean that it will be changed so that characters can do this quest again?

Also, @andyb stated in this post

that a new Winter Event has been launched. I did not find a way to start it, some quick ingame questions show no one seems to know how to start it. Sooo…where can we start it?