Will there be events that players if shrewd enough can change the outline of the story? Not a tournament, but players taking advantage, like what Deathwing tried at the inaugration. And what are CCP's thoughts on what DW did?

It depends. The storyline is an RP thing. A player RPing himself into the big plot in a *grand way* bringing with him tons of other players could very well sway the storyline. That said I want to stress that a l33t xpl0iter would not shift our storyline despite large sums of cash and fat missiles. Deathwing's attack came as a surprise to us, but I mildly expected someone to try to mess things up. So is human nature and I can't blame him for wanting to shoot that pacifist into the stars. *ahem*