Pirate101: Now I'm confused

A quick follow up to yesterday's rambling post.  So after logging back in, I destroyed the Frogerales ships until I got the key, ran the mausoleum, which consisted of 4 groups of mobs and took me about 25 min.  The I reach the tomb of and the guy isn't there, so we go back out to the entrance (at which point the game crashes, so I had to try and log back in a few times with great wailing and gnashing of teeth) and when I finally did, the quest was mercifully completed by talking to the ghost.  To sum up, I had to go to boot hill, destroy 12 ships, defeat a boss, defeat a boss again (both classified as "Epic Battles") go all the way to the other side of the map to talk to an NPC, destroy another 7-8 ships, the last one being hand-to-hand, sail all the way back to where I started, run another dungeon consisting of 4 not very difficult mob groups and then exit the dungeon and talk to an NPC.  That got me 2,000xp and a Two handed sword that may or may not be better than the spear I have (slightly better damage and big smashy weapon bonus > +15 armor penetration?  not sure.  I guess I should try it out).

So, the next story quest is to re-unite two characters in the game who have been separated.  Looking at the quest, I see that this one is worth 2,200xp.  Well, I guess I'm in for an even longer haul with this one.  I go to Flotsam, talk to an NPC, sail out past the Scurvy Dog hideout and talk to another NPC, go to Scurvy Dog Hideout and talk to two more NPC's, head out in front of SDH and collect 10 fish from nodes, then head to Monquista and destroy 7 or so ships to get 6 fruit containers, warp back to SDH and talk to the NPC.  Boom!  2,200xp and lvl 29.  So, more xp, less time.  I don't get it!  Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see a quest reward doled out at the completion of the quest, but after such a long drawn out questline with all the xp at the end, I expected this one to not resolve until sometime after I had resolved the quest's conflict and then run a few additional errands.

Is this a big deal?  I guess not.  It's just a little annoying and it would be nice if there was a slightly better balance between effort and reward.  Or, at the very least, a slow xp drip for each minor checkpoint.