I'd love to know whether in non-Anglo Saxon countries, the RWS is the top dog, too. Maybe now it is, after the Internet gave non-Anglo Saxons the opportunity to participate in boards like this one and participate in an international dialogue. But I remember from the pre-Internet times that the most easily available deck was the Thoth. Well, anecdotal evidence... but I'd love to hear what other non-Anglo Saxons have to say...
Traditional tarot is NOT synonymous with Rider Waite. RWS is one tradition among many. It has become wildly popular for a number of reasons, one of them probably its seemingly easy accessibility. From what I know today (not much), this is deceptive, and behind the images and the narratives, there is adherence to an esoteric system just like in the more abstract and "difficult" Thoth.
Not to mention the TdM tradition which is still much loved and is being re-discovered also by people who came to tarot through the RWS.
My first reading was with a Thoth deck, my own first deck was Thoth, and it's still my main reading deck. I bought the commemorative RWS only after I had some so-called clones already - the one I liked most was Morgan Greer. But my point of reference will always be Thoth, and the RWS images look like an "easy" deck. This is also the reason, I guess, why it's being touted as beginner's deck although I don't think that's generally applicable. It's better to choose what you are drawn to, not what everybody else knows as "the" tarot.
For a long time, I really didn't like Smith's artistic style. It seemed bland, a bit clumsy and illustrative at best, not innovative and challenging like many other tarots. Only after I read Kaplan's book about Smith, I could appreciate her style - seeing it in the context of her time, other examples of her work and her personality, it became clear that she was talented and skilled, much more so than her cards led me to assume. They are not her best work IMO. I really like her theatrical designs.
My own hypothesis is that she felt a bit "hedged in" by Waite's instructions. Her work flows better when she really knows the narrative, when she is fully aware of what she is illustrating. The vagueness that I feel in her cards may reflect that she was not completely initiated into the esoteric system the cards rest upon.
But since I'm far from knowledgeable, my hypothesis has little value. (I do know quite a bit about art, though, and I can see that Smith's pen stroke is much more self confident and free in other examples of her work, and her use of color bolder, and her faces more expressive.)
So for many years, I was not attracted to the RWS at all and couldn't understand why everybody (at least in the world of the Internet) seemed to see it as the ultimate deck. For me, the ultimate tradition would be the TdM and Thoth and others before RWS. I couldn't see at all what the buzz was all about. I saw clumsy line drawings in artificial poses.
But thanks to the great commemorative set, I have learnt to appreciate the RWS both for Smith's artistic merit and for Waite's more veiled approach to the complexities behind the scenes. I see it indeed today more as a stage where scenes are enacted - and if you could pull them up, you would see what the artist herself maybe did not fully know.
This makes the deck more interesting to me than it was before. I still don't get why it's so much more influential than other older decks like the Sola Busca or Minchiate or Oswald Wirth. But it has inspired very good books (like Pollack's) and many interesting new decks. I recognize its place in the tarot pantheon although I would have arranged this pantheon differently. But who wouldn't?