There was actually only a short period of time when only write-once DVDs existed. By 2005 just about any computer DVD drive you could buy supported all combinations of {CD,DVD}±{R,RW} that existed. Blank RW disks were, of course, more expensive than R's, though.

DVD±RW was super useful for passing around files in a period where flash drives were expensive. My high school photo journalism club used them a lot to pass around photos and documents, a couple days later they'd get ingested into the PC in the club room, erased, and put back on the pile for you to bring one home.

I don't ever think I had one fail to write

Yes, they were present and not much expensive than standard ones. However, the issue was that they encountered problems/data loss after few rewrites.

Except that according TFA they can actually last thousands of rewrite cycles.

Indeed, I posted it because my experience was different, perhaps due to my DVD writer or my settings. After 10- 15 rewrites, I almost always encountered issues