LEGEND OF THE SEEKER was not a cable miniseries (it was cancelled two days ago anyway), but a first-run syndication series. That means very low budgets and pressure to make each episode as stand-alone as possible, with recurring elements reduced to their minimum. The writer, Goodkind, was also not involved in the TV series.

A cable miniseries, or rather a series of miniseries, is what HBO is doing with GAME OF THRONES, its adaptation of George RR Martin's SONG OF ICE AND FIRE novels. A huge budget (each episode of GoT has four times the budget of an episode of LotS); well-known, award-winning writers, directors; some known actors (Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldaur are all rising stars with good form) and so on. The adaptation is also going to be faithful, with each season made up of each book in the series and with the author involved (if not on a day-to-day basis, but with regards to casting decisions and script approval).

WHEEL OF TIME would not be entirely suited to the latter kind of adaptation: it's just too long, and people might get a bit bored and wander off during Season 10. But otherwise it's the route it could go. My take is that its best shot is as a premium regular network show, like LOST, where it can have a decent budget and also decent-length seasons. You could do 10 episodes per book, 20 episodes per season, and cover the whole series in seven seasons. Or you can be more creative and do two books per season up until Book 6 and then do three, fitting ACoS, TPoD and WH into the fourth season, CoT, KoD and TGS into the fifth, and then just fit the last two books into the last season. You'd still have to lose some minor subplots and characters, but it's the best possible compromise between getting the story done as faithfully as possible.

The biggest flaw in all of this is the One Power. Doing regular effects work of that magnitude on a TV budget (even a LOST-sized one, or a premium cable budget), especially Dumai's Wells or the Seanchan assault on Ebou Dar and later Tar Valon, will be tricky.