WFaS had the ability to such a great standalone, but SiCh was rushed to make it in a year... They needed more time to fix the features of the game.
They patched it enough to where it's playable, but the dismal release killed the community for it from the start.
That is not true. Sich worked on the game and released a Beta, we tested the beta and told them 100 things they have to fix and improve, we even fixed some of their code.
But instead of doing anything, they released it half done.
WFAS failed and Taleworlds canceled NW. After a week of discussion we managed to convince Taleworlds not to cancel NW. However, SP was canceled and NW was converted from standalone to DLC.
Anyway, Sich never touched WFAS again. Taleworlds patched it for them and added a bunch of functionality that actually made the game playable.