I'm not sure I agree about the GOT-itization. I do think the producers are toning down some aspects that contribute to the 'feel' as you call it of the books - the language with its own swearing words, for instance, as well as Jordan's generally more PG-13-approach to sexuality (and limited attention for LGBTQ people), or some of the endless 'X is so much better with women' talk that we all loved to roll our eyes at. But I don't think that's a question of imitating GoT, it's just a question of 'there's a limit to how much weirdness/inside jokes a mass audience can take' and a general change in social attitudes in the last thirty years.

But I didn't see them adding sex or violence for the heck of it - in episode three there's a scene which, if it had been in GoT, would most definitely have involved nudity to at least some degree, but here it remained PG-13 - and I might add, that scene is only vaguely similar to one in the books, but it's pretty decent in terms of writing and acting (and in passing establishes that gay men are far more normal in the TV series than in the books). The violence that's there is no worse or more graphic than what's in the book, even if some of it is completely stupid (the Perrin thing, plus basically all of Nynaeve's storyline in the first three episodes).

As for the characters, they're definitely making major changes, but not all in the direction of making their personalities or motivations darker. Less subtle, definitely, but that may be inevitable for a big fantasy show that doesn't have time to capture all the subtleties that Jordan did take time for - or if it did take the time, would need to cut even more of the plot than it already has. Greg talked about wanting more of a LotR feel, but the thing is, LotR has many hours to tell a much simpler plot with far fewer main characters - and even then, a lot of the good stuff ended up on the cutting floor and was only restored in the DVD versions (which I personally consider as the real movies, I'd suspect he agrees).

Yeah, I'm hoping it'll get better. I might be wrong.

Heh. Whatever it takes, I guess.