I don't doubt you for a moment, but looking at the rules for AW (and BitD, which you don't mention) it seemed to me as though I'd be playing (not GMing, playing) in a metaphorical straightjacket. It just seemed as though everything was so tightly constrained, and there wasn't any world to push against or grab onto so reactions to my actions seemed wildly unpredictable--and if I can't predict the reactions, the actions themselves feel random to me.
All of that aside from my strong distaste for way games of that broad type lean so hard on complicated success, which I perceive as partial failure.
As I've stated a few times, the difference between a 5e game and a DW game (as examples) is focus and authorial control. We start a 5e campaign, the GM gives us a handout that states what the basic situation is and what sort of PC options exist. We start a DW campaign, we discuss possible campaign premises and develop an idea of what the initial steading is like, our characters and their bonds, etc. In either case we then create the actual characters. Now, I usually play D&D with people I know pretty well and we usually do something similar to what DW explicitly calls out, but it is notable that 5e doesn't even mention this topic at all. It is rather left up in the air how a game starts and who's input goes into that. I have the feeling 5e kind of assumes maybe the game just starts with a module being unwrapped.
From there, if we examine the 5e and DW materials, DW's text, particularly the section dedicated to the GM, is almost entirely focused on describing the GM's principles and agenda, and how those drive player-focused story/narrative. The advice and process here are QUITE specific, structured, clear, and get reinforced constantly throughout the text. Where 5e talks about how the mechanics are structured around 'regulating what happens'. 5e's perspective includes some discussion of story considerations and how the player's input can be taken into account, but mechanically it is all about how to adjudicate events. Where DW doesn't really even have a combat system, per se, and simply talks about a 'fiction first' kind of action resolution, 5e has a detailed wargame-like procedure. Fiction in 5e is there, but as a series of exceptions and elaborations of a basic core combat mechanic that is only related to fiction to the extent decided by the GM.
In both games players obviously decide what their PCs DO. In both games the GM has a significant role in determining what happens next, how the world reacts. 5e comes from and continues a tradition that includes 'fair referee' (IE generate the world's reactions to things based on what would 'really happen' or what 'seems realistic') and also 'storymaster' (this is the 2e story game admonishment which amounts to 'use GM force to get the story to work'). Note that in DW the story could be generated by the GM (as fronts) but the agenda states flatly that the story must be about the PCs and center on them, and that the player's input in terms of what they try to do should help drive things and shape what fronts are created, which are dropped, how the dooms play out, etc. The D&D story is sort of just implicitly a map and other world elements that the GM manages.
For example: We played a 5e campaign for a while in which I outlined and discussed with the GM how my character could establish a territory, a stronghold, and achieve various goals. The other players at least supplied plot hooks in terms of background and motivations as well. During play the GM put us through various adventures, and often we devised 'missions' for ourselves that related to our various agendas, although generally they were also shaped by what adventures the GM had available. This seems fairly typical to me. Whenever the GM's existing world details worked against this agenda, we would kind of get stuck. Although my character started to create a stronghold there was a lot of logistics and whatnot that kept getting in the way. Eventually we got sent on a mission by the GM and while we were gone some NPCs wiped out the whole operation. I guess this was 'realistic' maybe? I dunno. It definitely came across as "what was already established was taken away." There wasn't a process where my character staked his castle against some other goal, he just left for a few days and when he got back everything was undone.
I have to believe that a DW version of this campaign would have been a lot more focused on the matter at hand. Instead of a lot of the game being driven by "this is the module I have today, lets run it" the game would stay tightly focused on the PC's story goals. Things would not be taken away once they were gained, but instead situations would arise where they could be risked against either conflicting goals or further gains. Perhaps a Doom Clock would be ticking in the background which would involve a building monumental threat, which might wipe out the PCs entirely in principle. However, its portents would be clear and the story would be about how the PCs overcame the adversity, not a sort of simulation of what 'realistically' happened. Remember, the DW GM is a FAN OF THE PCS! Challenges to the PCs agendas are intended to give them a way to shine, or possibly go down in a blaze of glory, not to simply enact some GM master campaign meta plot.
