AZERTY is a french keyboard. Looking at online images, here's its layout:
A Z E R T Y U I O P
Q S D F G H J K L M
W X C V B N
It's quite a departure from what I expected it would look like. I mean, where's « and », those French quotation marks I had to keep using Insert Symbol to get in Word during French class? I thought at least a
French keyboard would have them. LOL
Slightly less offtopic, I agree that it is hard to tell which way is which. This is for two reasons. One is that you might be moving in one direction, then you come up to a ledge, and you think that to get on it, you can rotate and then keep moving in that same direction. But nope - that direction goes somewhere else.
The other reason is that it is not perfectly isometric; it is skewed. In the initial orientation, the mappings of WASD make sense because it is skewed in your favor. Looking at the dimensions of the tiles on the ground, you can see that the tile you are on is stretched further horizontally on the NW-SE (\) side than it is on the NE-SW (/) side. So NW-SE is the x-axis (moved along with A and D) and NE-SW is the y-axis (moved along with W and S).
While it would still be much nicer if W simply went up and S simply went down, it is easy to discern which way is up/down and which way is sideways.
That is... until you rotate.
In the other two orientations, NE-SW is the more horizontally skewed axis of the two. But it's still the Y-axis, moved along with W and S.
W always goes NE. D always goes SE. S always goes SW. A always goes NW. Rest assured, consistency isn't the issue.
Rather, the problem is rather that two thirds of the time, the axis that you travel along with W and S is more horizontal than the axis that you travel along with A and D.