Having watched Memories of Alhambra first, I did not expect much from this. Here the writer does a much better job in every way, but ultimately at its core this drama suffers from similar problems. The setting is obviously much better, instead of a super boring MMO world we have a manhwa world, with some interesting spaghetti western elements, a subtle noir vibe is also present. With the premise that magic is real, sometimes nonsense stuff kind of makes sense in W, it's not like Alhambra where everything is a jumbled mess. With that said W is a mediocre drama at best, yes the cast had some amazing actors, the OST was mostly great at setting the right atmosphere and the cinematography was very pretty & the darker lighting was also very fitting most of the time, but all these don't make up for the fact that I just wasn't that interested in the villains & their deeds. The romance was fine, but this is probably the worst chemistry that I've seen Lee Jong-suk have with anyone, it's by no means below average in kdramaland, but I've expected more. A nicely wrapped up happy ending would have improved my opinion of the drama a lot, it's a shame that it did not happen, it's nice that they got together for the last 5? minutes of the drama, but for all we know Kang Chol would just end up in prison again for not having a legitimate identity... (in the fantasy genre normally I wouldn't care much about this, but in W the plot device of not having a proper identity is brought up again & again...)

This writer really shouldn't work alone, if she could just be responsible for the world building & maybe the characters, while pairing up with someone that knows how to keep the audience interested.
I think she also wrote Queen InHyon's Man, I like that drama quite a bit, but the writing is not very good there either.