Spoilers ahead, if anyone cares. Spoiler: you shouldn't.
The three primary male characters in this series are Rand, Mat, and Perrin.
In the TV show, Rand is dating and fucking Egwene. Mat comes from a broken home with a lecherous and alcoholic father. Perrin is married, and he accidentally slaughters his wife in the very first episode.
None of this happens in the books.
Rand and Egwene seem like a thing initially, but it never happens. Mat's dad is a stand-up dude and a pillar of the community. Perrin is very single and doesn't accidentally murder anyone.
Let's summarize the changes:
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Rand goes from having no physical relationship with Egwene to fucking her in the first episode
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Mat's father goes from good and decent member of the community to drunken adulterer
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Perrin is given a fucking wife out of nowhere, and he accidentally kills her for cheap effect
I've never seen such radical, unnecessary, and terrible changes to a beloved series. I've also never seen the sheer cope I witnessed when surveying the WoT communities online. People are glossing over these massive, character-wrecking alterations like they're somehow part and parcel for adapting anything to TV/film. No, retards, this is not normal. This is fucked.
Brandon Sanderson, the dude who finished writing the books after Robert Jordan died, is on record saying that he tried to fight these changes, and that the fans would be upset about them. He of course moderated his position because you can't burn any bridges in the industry - especially not when you've got a whole bunch of your own books you'd like to see adapted. But even with his tacit permission to hate this nonsense, people are still posting about how they cried when they finally saw their favorite books on TV.
I'm rambling. I knew it would be bad. But Jesus Christ, I never expected it to be this flagrantly disrespectful. Robert Jordan is turning over in his grave.
I gotcha.
I don't really agree with your conclusion. I'll just say that I loved Wheel of Time, and Robert Jordan is one my absolutely favorite authors. Those books were a huge part of my childhood. I used to dream about a TV show, and now ... ugh.
Anyway, I've only read the Sanderson-WoT books once. They were fine. I mean, I'm also a big Sanderson fan, and I think he did about as good a job as could have been done. He was given an INCREDIBLY difficult task and yeah, he and others have fully admitted that he had to come up with a lot of material from scratch. But, I don't think it's fair to call them merely fan fiction.
My biggest problem with Sando-WoT books is that the characters didn't feel right. Jordan was a master of characters. Sando-Mat just doesn't feel like Mat. Sando-Rand is just a bit off. etc.
Again, no knock on Brandon Sanderson, I think he did a better job than almost anyone else.
2 for 2 on badly done adaptations now, although the Billy Zane one off between Ishamael and The Dragon was likely done to retain the rights to it.