I feel it was wasted, yes... it was fine till Zenos broke in, after that we should have hidden in some of the villages, sneak into the city and retake part of it - then storm the Palace and have our hub based around there (potential Ala Mhigo restoration and housing for 7/8/9.0...) and have a Proper city there. We know its there, just not accessible for us. It made me dislike stormbloods hubs a lot. I loved Kugane, but besides the MB and Eureka and the Inn there was nothing there (the rowena npc's were added much later).

IMO stormblood suffered from the split and the split itself suffered from them insisting on the 4.0 + 4.1-4.3 + 4.4-4.5 formula.