The show did have its positives. Most of the core actors did a good job with the characters. And a lot (though not quite enough) of the large budget came through in some beautiful set pieces and decent visual effects. However, as others have claimed ad nauseum (though not without merit), WoT, and the broader post Game of Thrones fantasy entertainment genre in general was mired in prioritizing progressive ideology over tried and tested (best selling) source material. Amazons treatment of the books simply took a big steaming dump over the books, overall. Game of Thrones was so successful over the first 6 seasons because they had great (again, tried and market tested like the WoT books) source material and they followed them relatively closely.