Indeed. WoT's slow plot progression always surprises me. It has to be the most verbose series, and I think that RJ himself regretted it, and thus demanded a rapid closure of the series.

When reading other books, plot progression hits you on the head like a hammer. Most well-regarded authors write a huge story in a concise and dense form, which I'm much more partial to. The character will think that he needs to go somewhere, and the next chapter will start from his arrival in that place. In WoT, when someone wants to go somewhere, it marks the beginning of a new quest and side-plot that could take half the book or more to initiate.

Anyway, I don't like to rant on about this too much. People who complain about plot progression are generally told that they're impatient readers who want instant satisfaction. But it's not that. When reading WoT, sometimes I feel like an Ent who needs to attend a meeting for a whole day to obtain a simple outcome. Most people want a story, not the experience of being caught in a giant web not knowing which of 1200 characters is going to get their two cents. In many ways, I think RJ regretted the outcome of his series more than anyone. He must really have been desperate to insist that there was only one book left - even if it turned out to be a 2000-pager in three parts.