As a dramatization of the prologue to Eye of the World, and thus, the whole series, it was okay. The one change they made, with LTT killing himself in a mundane fashion, rather than using the Power to blast himself out of existence might have actually worked better as the kickoff to a TV series, rather than jumping the audience right into the One Power. It might be a little hard to convey entirely through visuals what happened to people who don't know what the One Power is or does. I imagine a substantial portion of the audience might leave that scene thinking "So he turned himself into a mountain?"
The only problems I saw with this were the issues with its existence in the first place.
Personally I found it atrocious, amateur-hour at its worst. Heck they did better TV than that in Eastern Europe back in the 80s. There's no adaptation - it's RJ's dialogue a bit dumbed-down recited badly by actors who seemed wholly bored and not even trying to put their heart into it (not that either seem to have much acting mojo to begin with), the directing is terrible and the editing worse. They approached both characters wrong. There was no dramatic tension, it's diluted way beyond that (a shame considering even those who think RJ a bad writer credit him highly for this dramatic prologue), no rhythm to the scene, and I'm sure non readers would have been confused as hell by the half-baked directorial tricks they chose to portray the fact LTT is insane. In the hands of a good scriptwriter and director, this prologue ought to have packed a punch, in no more than a third of this turd's length.
I still think it's a bad idea on the whole to adapt WOT for television, given it's basically a Fantasy soap opera (in the vein of the "Space Opera" derivative) and given the means that would be required to pull it off as such it's bound to be cheap and terrible or else the characters and story and tone will be completely denatured in a condensed version. Some books are meant to stay books. The only way a decent audio-visual adaptation of WOT is even thinkable, IMO, is as an animated series. That said, if this still surfaces one day, I sure hope it won't be by REE who after the fiasco of the comics are proving again they're completely inept.
PS: I'm sure they altered the ending because that's just a stunt to keep the rights and they didn't want to waste too much on that (I mean, I'd evaluate there's about 2h worth of work to replicate the cheap visual FX they used. In a day's work I could have done it ten times better), but I don't agree it should be changed. It's meant to be confusing/intriguing or otherwise it's missing its point. It has to present LTT as a human and good man (but not as this adaptation overdid) to spread doubt, but it's also to establish LTT's destructive power, in fact with the creation of the mountain RJ managed to elevate this event of LTT's suicide to a mythical status right off the bat. We have to get something to understand why LTT became seen as monstrous. The kinslaying gives us the horror, but it's his death that clues us how dangerous men like him can get. I think in the context of a TV show, at least it's what I might propose if my team was asked to develop the opening credits for a story like this, the creation of Dragonmount and TV, after occuring in the prologue to the series, would also be the first images of the opening credits,leading to a 30-40 sec. epic depiction of the Breaking of the World.. mountains falling, seas drying, shadowspawn, planes falling, hordes of refugees. Madmen, Aes Sedai, the end of technology, Then the building of new cities, rulers and common folk, Artur Hawkwing and a shot of some powerful Amyrlin (Bonwhin), armies etc. - a final lead into the more orderly world of the New Era ending on a panoramic shot of the modern Tar Valon, and then pan to the shadow Dragonmount cast near it. It doesn't matter the opening isn't fully understood the first time around - the story of LTT and the Breaking resurfaces very soon and all will be clear.
The prologue as RJ wrote it also helped to introduce Moiraine as something to be wary of. That prologue achieved about none of these goals.
