I am having the the exact same issue as you and agree with you on every other point. The quest is tedious, long, and just not fun. The early game content felt worlds better and was far more rewarding. I believe the addition of apatia to our questlines was a bug as well. This is just speculation, but it could be the cause of our The Steel Tide bug. Even if the quest functioned correctly I would still say it needed more than a little work.