You're perfectly right that WoT is massive, and minus at least characters at the level of Egianin, Domon, etc. a lot is lost. That alone recommends animation.

But I also feel there a lot of visual distinction in WoT that will be completely lost in live action. GoT needed a few grand castles, and the rest is fairly standard city/road. But WoT, if you want to give a sense of a different world that is the crumbling remain of a massively technically skilled past, requires entire cities that are distinctive, beautiful, and otherworldly. A lot of the charm of WoT lies in that too. And animation is way more suited to achieving that.

Frankly, Amazon or Netflix deciding to come up with an animated Epic drama is the only way we get a good WoT adaptation.