This is well known - W&W was rushed to market.
Many things that had been planned to be included in the game end up being omitted in order to get the game onto the market. Notably among the missing elements is the lack of consequences for player actions when they violate the oath they take in the crypt. There is a sound or text file (still included with the game) which indicates that it was planned that the Mavin would destroy (or harm) the characters who broke their oath.
They simply ran out of money and had to get the game on the market. To their credit none of the bugs are "game stoppers" and they independantly produced a patch (it is not an authorized Activsion patch).
As a side note, many of the bugs seem to be related to hardware issues rather than the game itself. I had an almost no problems/bugs when playing on my old Win98 machine. The only 2 bugs I can recall are the Vampire Ring bug which wasn't that important since I never really wanted to do that whole thing and not having all 3 glowstones in Collasium. There is an easier fix to the latter problem than the one I used - I learned to hack items for the game.
Wyv