Oh, for sure.

What I meant is more that the long dialogue in the book works great on the page interspersed with the inner thoughts, the descriptions of body language and surroundings etc., but in a drama it's much trickier. On a stage, with the audience focused on the actors, you can get away with more text (still less so than in a novel, eg: how much writers like Hugo or Dumas cut of their own dialogue when translating their novels to the stage) but on TV or in movies it's a trap. This was "fun" to listen to for someone who's read the book many times and can almost recite the dialogue, but to the average joe that scene was atrociously boring and static, like a bad stage play.

A better director would have worked much more with the body language, and cut a great deal of the dialogue, create the feeling of a verbal joust through various tricks (moving the camera around them is one such). E.g: You can show that someone is baffled, no need to have him say out loud he's confused. The long tirade of LTT's achievements was a good example of something extraneous in a dramatization. The audience can't understand 90% of it will have long forgotten about it by time it might understand it. It's a classic book tease/hook, a great way to start a book and get the reader intrigued. The drama version of this "hook" trick needs to pack much more of a punch to have a similar effect.. it's something American TV has perfected, and masters.

I've seen much worse acting for sure, but it certainly wasn't any good. It really felt like a rehearsal, with the actors lacking direction and holding back.

IDK, I never really put much into LTT's characterization, and I thought the interpretation of Ishamael as smug might have been valid.

The smugness wasn't bad, but overall this really wasn't how I pictured Ishamael as he is described in the prologue. Physically it was all wrong, of course. Way too scruffy with that beard, and too old. He's supposed to appear like a disdainful aesthete, intensely arrogant, unctuous, full of pride, but not precious. Something more, I don't know.... Victorian, I guess.

As for LTT, I couldn't believe in that guy as a great military leader and consummate politician, proud of himself, and with proper gravitas, in the Roman sense. Even insane you could still perceive this about the guy in the prologue. LTT is also supposed to have had great charisma.

I'm pretty sure they wrote it this way largely in order to get something of a decent length (ie: they milked it for all it was worth), but that still doesn't make it better. Jordan needed to hook the reader, and he came up with very visual elements, which the adaptation didn't capitalize on. The scene would have been much more powerful had they stuck closer to RJ, ie: opening with LTT striding through a palace where visibly something bad happened, streaks on the walls, fissures in the floor, crooked paintings or furnitures, calling for his wife. Then you realize she's lying dead at his feet, the broken bodies of children not far, and yet the man seems oblivious to the corpses (you can have him step on her dress, etc.) and keeps calling. Something's obviously not right with this man's mind. Ishamel then shimmers into view. Etc.

That, and I would even say the overconfidence of someone who knows he's already won. I didn't really get that vibe from the performance, though.

Animation remains quite expensive, but it would solve a great deal of the issues that would arise if one tried to produce a live action series of WOT, and greatly increase the odds a studio could see through such a mammoth of a series.

One of the problems that would arise is that a whole lot of the fun of WOT are the mysteries and how everything and everyone seem tied in some "pattern". That's in part conveyed by having a whole lot of recurring small roles, character who disappear and later reappear, and whose role can suddenly become much more important for a while, then fade.. Verin, Egeanin, Domon, Elaida, Galad, Morgase, Berelain, Siuan, Bryne, even just the main 3-4 nobles in each nation etc. That list would get very long. Cut too many of those, and it's no longer WOT. But it would be a nightmare for a TV show to try to secure so many recurrent guest stars over so many years of production, and with so many small parts already hard to follow for non-readers, there's a limit to the number of recasts you can get away with...

Animation would massively simplify this aspect. Voice actors are used to play many parts in the same show, and it's much easier anyway to recast a voice if needed, the character will still look the same and a lot of the audience won't even notice the change of voice.

It would also get rid of the problem that WOT can hardly be done under 6 to 8 seasons, maybe more, yet it covers 3 years in story-time....

Yet another problem is that only the massive series like GoT can afford to film in many countries, which any attempt to film WOT in real locations standing-in for WOT locales would require - and there's a reason why even with GOT's succcess HBO can afford to produce only 10 episodes per season (if they want to have a full grid to present anyway). At 10 episodes/season, an adaptation of WOT would last about forever (only 22 ep/season would start making it a bit reasonable).... As the series progresses and the main cast scatters, the number of locations increases a lot.... but some of them wouldn't be seen for seasons, before they return.. Whether you store away sets or destroy them and rebuild them anew years later, it's a lot of money. The alternative is 3D set extensions/matte paintings, but those on any large scale are still very expensive to make. Again, in animation designing and creating (and documenting for future reference) all those locations would be very expensive, but once they're developed it's not a problem to have several showing in one episode, then not see one of them for 22 episodes before you go back there again.

So in the end I think an animated version, done with care, would much better serve the series, if a visual adaptation is essential anyway. I don't really feel the need for one, personally. I think WOT is way too vast, way too focused on details.. too literary. If you streamline it too much, it would lose its soul, and end up being a very generic Fantasy epic, the usual coming-of-age hero's journey.

It's an universe much more suited to contexts like gaming. An online RPG game would be massively successful, I think, and so would be a game in the vein of Elder Scrolls.