Completely fair, but when they spend entire episodes on things that could have been easily and faithfully reduced to a 10 minute scene, or spent more than half of the first season on "who's the dragon? it's such a mystery!!" when that wasn't even a plot point of the first book. It's a fair argument, but not when they completely squandered their available screentime on frivolous things. At that point it's just a cop-out.

I went into it as a new turn of the Wheel

I get this was the approach of a lot of viewers, but when you have to do personal mental gymnastics to justify liking the way the adaptation was done, then you've already admitted that it's bad. And forget things like the order of events and such. I'm talking about radically changing the world rules, how the One Power works, and characters assassinations. Rand is supposed to be one of the most gentle and caring people alive. To the point that was slowly driving himself mad with trying to keep everyone safe and alive. The effort to do the right thing was breaking him inside and it's one of the major aspects of his character. And then in the show he murders a guy to get into the hospital where Logain was living. Nope, I have no interest. I have the books and I can enjoy those.