I'm currently rereading in preparation for the last book, and it strikes me that an abridged version of the Wheel of Time would be an attractive concept. For example, in book 5 a ridiculous amount of space is wasted on Nynaeve thinking about how childish and silly Elayne is, and how sensible she herself is, and vice versa. Just by stripping away things like that, and maybe trimming some of the descriptions of everything in sight, I'm sure it would be possible to cut the series down by at least a couple of books.

If one went about it more aggressively, removing subplots like Morgase's insane visit to the Whitecloaks, and all of Pedron Niall's mad rambling about how he is the only one who sees what's ahead, when clearly he is the only one who doesn't, as well as everything concerning Perrin in books 8 - 12, it should be possible to lose another few books.

I'm not sure I would like to have read only an abridged version, but it would still be an interesting experiment to see how much could be cut and still be left with largely the same story.