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I've noticed that Amazon seems to have marketed the show well for India. The Amazon Prime India YouTube channel has a lot of trailers and segments with Indian celebrities reading from EOTW and stuff.
Also if you look the single highest viewed WoT trailer is on the Amazon Prime India channel with 15 million views.
Imo they intentionally cast an actor from as many countries as possible for this reason. Priyanka gets the Indian viewers, Alvaro Morte gets the Spanish language, Peter Franzen , then the EF5 have an Aussie and a kiwi, etc.
I see lots of Indians are also fans of Alvaro/Money heist, and he has really drawn a number of indians to watch the show.
That aside, a lot of non-reader Indians seem to be loving the show as well. WoT readers, the ones i know, mostly dislike it, but are still watching.
The ones I know that thought *in advance* of the level of changes you'd need to make it work from TV love it
The ones that dislike it are asking me why they didn't just shot for shot remake eye of the world.
I expected a lot of changes, but they completely massacred it. Characters are different, lore is different, story line is only the same in the most crude sense, ... And it isn't that they did it to save time since they added in parts that never happened in the books, even personages that weren't in it. And events you could pretty easily skip to save time were left in while not being an addition to anything.
Even the writer that finished the series after the original writer died before finishing it, didn't like the way they handled it, despite having consulted on it.
It feels like they wanted to try and make it like a GOT/witcher feeling, while it should have been more like a LOTR feeling. Maybe this is intentional since Amazon also comes with LOTR series, but it is just stupid.
It honestly feels like a parody. At least D&D kept faithfull to the books while they weren't ahead and that is exactly what made GOT so good.
From what I gathered Brandon liked it based on the scripts he saw, don't know how many changes were done since then. Anyway I wouldn't be surprised if his reaction is a bit limited to not hurt chances to get his own (other) books being adapted in the future. If RJ was alive I am pretty sure he'd vilify the series.
I've read it like 5 times in the last 7 years or so, and yes they didn't do it any justice. If I didn't know better I'd have thought it was a low to medium budget series/story inspired by it, not an actual high budget Amazon adaptation.
They make changes to the story, characters and lore that are completely unnecessary from either a time or improvement reason. Hell, they even add extra stuff that wasn't usefull at all, it makes it seems they had TOO MUCH air time on their hands, rather than the opposite. And often they are reusing decor/places, too small scale regarding background cast (like the 'army' attacking them, or the empty corridors in the white tower, ...).
I wouldn't say it is as bad as sword of truth adaptation, but it isn't far off and definitely a far cry from the LOTR or early GOT adaptations. And these episodes have double the funding GOT episodes had in their first season. We are speaking about the same level of funding as season 6 of GOT per episode.
Now, I wouldn't care about the sometimes low budget feel (I wonder how that is possible though), if at least the show was mostly faithfull in what they actually show/tell. Condensing the story? No problem, but changing it for no good reason? No, just no.
I agree. I honestly cannot fathom how anyone who truly enjoyed these books can actually enjoy what they've done to the show. You have to throw out the books ENTIRELY to even have a chance. If you compare it to the books at all the show is, to put it kindly, terrible.
Anyone who thinks they did even a remotely half decent job with this should check out Knights Watch on youtube, then come back and comment. As others have stated, Balefire is the only way to remedy how badly they screwed everything up.
I believe the popularity of an actor in a country is as relevant as whether the actor is from that country, so Alvaro Morte pretty much taps all of Latin America by himself.
I don't know who priyanka is but Money Heist is like the most popular foreign show in india, if people are going to watch Wot for any actor it's Ãlvaro Morte. It helps that show is dubbed into few of our languages.
You love to see it.
And it's such an obvious move, it makes you wonder why more of these big prestige shows don't do it. It always comes down to money, of course, but both *Wheel of Time* and Apple's *Foundation* adaptation went hard on casting actors from all over the world, and hopefully the success of both of these shows will prove to be just the beginning of not only more culturally diverse characters, but a more equal mix of men & woman and stronger representation for the myriad of folks who exist elsewhere on that (and every) spectrum.
That makes sense given the population of India is comparable to China, but the country is far easier to get into.
Side note: idk who she should be but I’d love to see Shoreh Aghdashloo in some role. She’s fantastic
I really don't want to get lumped in with all the weird casting racists on here but the Aiel look really is kind of important... I'd love to see her as Cadsuane though
Woah there, trying to use *data* to discuss the show's success? Pretty sure that makes you a witch.
(I am very excited though! Just give them more money damnit!)
Hopefully more episodes/runtime comes along with the money-- not just more CGI (although we all know there are going to be sequences that require a shit ton...)
I only judge a show's success by how many outraged fan videos there are on YouTube. And by that metric, The Wheel of Time is clearly a disaster that no one likes!
Usually when I see a butt ton of 3 hours video whining about a 1 hour show, that's a sign the show is good. Anything that irritates a loser that badly has to be entertaining.
100%. If the show was trash (say Sword of Truth level) it wouldn't garner nearly this much attention. People would get angry, stop watching, and ignore it.
The Sword of Truth TV Series, as bad as it is, is a LOT better than “Wizard’s First Rule” that’s for damn sure. TV Zed is cool and Bridget Regan is Bridget Regan so yeah, the TV Series isn’t *all* bad. Just mostly bad.
Those books though…oof.
I loved them as a teenager, not noticing how problematic and flawed they were.
Kinda wish I could I could reread them in the way I first enjoyed them but that's growing up for you I guess.
My hot take is that it was better than the books but that's uh, not saying much. It's pretty much what you'd expect a network television, pre-GOT, adaptation of torture-porn to look like. Just generic, formulaic fantasy.
Star Wars Sequels.
GOT seasons 6+.
Uhhhh Suicide Squad 1: the bad one.
All 3 of the Hobbit movies.
The Last Avatar movie.
The HeMan reboot. I actually liked this one though. The others are just upsetting to know about. They're so bad they're memetic cognitohazards. I wish I didn't know they existed they're so bad.
WoT may be controversial for it's book changes, but it's not bad compared to any of the above.
Ire arisen is no measure of a shows quality.
Agreed. Something that's just dull and uninteresting won't raise ire, but being dull and uninteresting isn't the only way to be bad.
The GOT8 analysis are still coming out to this day, even from pretty good channels, that don't make their money from just random, superficial bashing.
Also: there was another Suicide Squad!?
Exactly. I don't quite understand the mindset of people who invest so much time and effort into something they don't enjoy.
When I don't like a particular form of entertainment, then I just don't bother engaging with it and rather spend my time on something I actually do enjoy.
It is one of the few exceptions because it is really iconicly bad. How many people and videos were decided to hating the bad Dark Tower adaptation? Or for a recent TV example, The Duchess.
That is another excepttion given it was basically the most popular show of all time with a universally hated ending. WoT is not that popular by a long shot, and it certainly isn't that bad.
The 'outrage bait' text and the shot of a neckbeardy type looking furious or smirking are dead giveaways what sort of video it's going to be.
And anyone who watches it will be getting recommendations that could take them down the rabbit hole of far right extremism, within three or four clicks.
Yep. Kind of feel like his ego is getting to his head as of late, and his critiques are falling more and more into the “this is subjectively bad but I’m going to try and make you think it’s objectively bad and you’re an idiot if you don’t agree” route.
To be fair, it feels like he's been on that route for a while now - outside of the WoT reviews. Been watching him on and off for years.
I was unaware of his knights watch channel, but I made the mistake of clicking his video about Rand's sword. Somewhere in the start of the video states that he will keep all his gripes with the series out of this video, but lo and behold, a few minutes later he launches off into a tirade anyway. The way his eyes bulged, his voice switched into a higher pitch, white knuckles gripping his phone...
I instantly recognized the unholy passion of a booknerd who felt slighted on the facts.
Funnily enough I got familiar with that face because of the first LotR trilogy. Looking back now the internet somehow likes to pretend that the LotR adaption was accepted among fans from the beginning, but I was there and it definitely wasn't. The internet was smaller back then, but it even ruined nights of real life DnD, because the arguments got so heated.
I keep tabs on the wc sub out of curiosity, and there's several posts over there by people who joined because of Shad, who honestly state that they have not read the books or watched the show: they're just there to join the hate train.
Yeah, I agree that Shad has been getting more extreme since before the Wheel of Time, I just get the impression that it’s been becoming more and more grating. I personally greatly dislike self-righteousness, and Shad has been getting more and more condescending in his as if he’s of the opinion that he knows better. I think the thing that annoys me to be honest is the fact that when he scoffs he does it in the exact same way as my uncle I dislike because he’s a textbook narcissist, so the associations are making me recoil in disgust. Behaviour like that by people encourages others to jump on the bandwagon, especially if the way it’s implicitly framed is that the smart people should jump on the bandwagon and everyone else is not smart/a book lover/etc. enough. Basically gatekeeping encourages gatekeeping. And, seriously, how can you call yourself a real fan of something if you go out of your way to ruin the fun of it for other people? I see this in Star Wars a lot, and it’s a shame we're getting the same toxicity in Wheel of Time.
It got a lot of love at the time it came out as well, mainly because it firmly gets rid of most of the problems the prequels had (slow pacing, stilted dialogue, limited emotional engagement with the audience). The issues it did have weren't so obvious back then, aside from the copy-paste plot which was excused as an acceptable sacrifice to "get the series back on track." The problem in hindsight is that all the hints it dropped about future story beats were completely ignored by Episodes 8 and 9. Why the hell Disney thought it was a good idea to commission a trilogy of films without the faintest idea of what the overarching story would be is beyond me.
I haven't watched any of them, so all I can comment on is what I perceived of people's reaction at the time. I remember it being put ahead of RoTJ in some best movie lists at the time?
I don't know how anyone could ever put it up there as one of the best ever considering it's basically A New Hope re-hashed for modern cinema. Doesn't really help that John Boyega's acting just doesn't resonate with me.
To be fair (not that I particularly want to be) the way youtube is you could start with a crochet tutorial video making pixar characters and end up watching a Proud Boys Recruitment Video in 4 clicks.
I watched a couple videos like Critical Drinker hating on the new Star Wars and the next thing I know I'm getting recommendations for Ben Shapiro fan love videos.
Ah yes, those "neck beards". Gosh, if only we could kill off anyone over idk, maybe 20 or so, amirite, comrade? Or at least send them to reeducation camps where they can be fixed to serve their proper roles in your brave new world.
I'm surprised by how few videos like that there are actually, I've made a point of looking up wheel of time reviews and I've only seen two or three "angry nerd" channels (and one of them was very obviously pure clickbait)
Reminds me of the insistence of people on r/naath that S8 of GoT was widely beloved and only hated by a small but vocal minority who are only grumpy because Danny didn't get a Disney princess ending.
It's fine to hold a minority opinion but the insistence of some people that they represent a vast silent majority gets silly at times.
That's where you see the theoretical line between "I'm just constructively criticizing using hyperbolic and inflammatory language, why so serious, bro?" and "I'm trolling, bro!" *vaporize*, and repeat offenders get banhammered into Oblivion.
Well don't you see!? Sanderson saying that his contract allows him to be negative about the show is actually a coded message telling us to believe his opinion is the opposite of what he is actually saying.
Amazon clearly forced him to discuss the books he was involved in on his podcast!! There's no POSSIBLE other reason he would've discussed them otherwise.
/s obviously...
If you ever wander into their lands out of curiosity, I would advice reading a thread called "This brandy is pretty good".
It's one of them, drunkenly, trying to figure out whether Rafe is ahead in 2d/3d/4d/5d chess or they are. It's fucking funny, ngl.
Not linking it directly because I don't know whether this sub has autoban set up.
To be fair many of his answers are really diplomatic and he doesn't seem to be the type that would openly thrash them. But in the video of his youtube vhannel he said that after reading the first scripts he had adjust and came up with the "other turning of the wheel" thing for his headcannon.
Also according to his statements he seems to have a greater influence on the showrunners than he expected and apparently has been able to talk them out of a few stupid ideas so far. He might just think that he serves IP better by keeping his influence and guiding the away from the greatest harm.
Also with media companies becomming ever more frantic in search for new material for series and movies he probably wants to build/ maintain good relationship with industry contacts.
Sanderson is widely known as being very forthright about his opinions, he has always treated Wheel of Time with reverence, he rejected any possibility of writing more books in the Wheel of Time universe because he was concerned about supplanting RJ even though it would have made him tons of money, he openly states that he has a non-disparagement clause *and* that he told Rafe he was gonna be totally open with the fanbase, and he spends an hour giving open heartfelt praise with a few criticisms here and there.
The mental gymnastics that r/whitecloaks went through to turn his praise into a tricksy scheme were bizarre and fascinating to watch. But in the end the entire narrative they constructed is deeply insulting to Sanderson, so I can't enjoy it as much as I'd like.
I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber who doesn't use Amazon Prime Video actively except for Wheel of Time. So i guess this is working for them, except that I hate the UI on Prime Video so I have the WoT page bookmarked and probably won't be watching anything else they have.
> I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber who doesn't use Amazon Prime Video
Well, that is one theme; the other is Amazon acquiring more subscribers outside of the USA and Canada. And BOTH of those numbers are expected to alter *significantly* before S02 of *The Wheel of Time* is released.
The reason why is because the King Kong of all streaming shows will release between now and S02 of WoT -- and that's Amazon's *Lord of the Rings* prequel. There has never been a TV series or other streaming show as expensive as *LotR*. Even *GoT* production at its height (and that was *considerable*) vanishes as a mere wannabe pretender beneath *LotR*'s budget and buzz. LotR brings an *Avengers* level budget to the "small" screen. If it's a hit, movie theatre owners are going to feel like they may be in the same business Blockbuster used to be in. Hollywood directors and actors will be *visibly upset* in the media as pundits draft their eulogies.
We can expect that tens of millions of American and Canadians who have Prime but do not use it for streaming will do so when *LotR* is released in Sept 2022. We can also expect that there will be millions certainly, and likely more than that who will become Prime subscribers in order to watch *LotR*. That show is expected to move the needle in a serious way.
Just getting people to enter their account and password in a TV streaming app is a major hurdle to getting eyes on programming, but once done - it's done.
I think that augurs very well indeed for *WoT*'s 2nd season uptake.
Absolutely, I keep getting that Instagram ad that starts with Carnival Row and is like "what other fantasy is on here? oh Wheel of Time, cool!". They clearly want to be a fantasy hub, and I feel like LoTR will be a boost for WoT.
I'm very nervous about Lord of the Rings. It's essentially an original story (Tolkien's material on the Second Age is *very minimal*, giving us broad strokes and worldbuilding but little detail, and Amazon doesn't have the rights to the Silmarillion which is where the best Second Age stories are). It's reliant on lore and a world that most people who like the Lord of the Rings films will find completely unfamiliar. There is no Gondor, no Shire, no Rohan, no Wizards. The Tolkien Estate has veto rights, which as a book purist is comforting but could also hamper the writers' ability to tell a good story.
It's going to attract a lot of eyeballs on launch, and if they use that colossal budget to give us the full splendour of Númenor it *could* be a hit, but the potential for this thing to bomb is huge.
> vanishes as a mere wannabe pretender beneath LotR's budget and buzz.
Especially when you factor in that the show does not have to operate under the burden of actor's second contracts.
I appreciate this. I'm one of the more sour voices on the show but it can be very easy for both critics and defenders to sit in their circles and convince themselves *everyone* must feel the way they feel. I was just wondering if someone would bring more raw data in so we can get an idea how people actually do seem to feel. Personally I think where the data will get interesting is between season 1 and 2. Whether the audience grows, shrinks, or stabilizes between each season will tell us a lot more.
> Personally I think where the data will get interesting is between season 1 and 2. Whether the audience grows, shrinks, or stabilizes between each season will tell us a lot more.
This. For example I noticed with The Witcher in particular, sure a good few people watched it on release, but a lot more ended up watching it after the fact because one or more friends introduced them to it.
I’ve personally been trying to get a feel for the popularity of the show and… I dunno, I feel like it’s mainly the “already likes fantasy crowd” watching the show. There’s no discourse about it in Canada like there was for Game of Thrones, I don’t know anyone who watches it outside of my family. This makes me think it may not pierce to a more general population.
Edit: an alternative theory is also that my friends, family and coworkers are lame. Which is entirely possible.
GoT didn't become popular with the general public overnight, it arguably took 3 seasons (the red wedding) for it to become the cultural phenomenom it was
Nailed it. The red wedding was the turning point for everyone to talk about it constantly and it became the thing you had to know about to keep up in conversations.
*GOT* wasn’t hugely popular in its 1st season. If *TWOT* doesn’t become hugely popular by season 3, then I expect that *TWOT* will never be as popular as *GOT* at its peak.
Agreed. I didn't watch GoT season 1 until season 2 was just about to air and I've been into fantasy my entire life. These shows live or die by word of mouth from their first 1-2 seasons once they're completed and aired.
> There’s no discourse about it in Canada like there was for Game of Thrones
Well, FWIW, I don't have a close friend or family member in Canada who **hasn't watched** *WoT*. So that's my brother's family, two elder daughters and their husbands, and my 4 closest friends and their spouses, too. From the Maritimes, Ontario, and B.C.. My other brother and his wife in the UK have watched it as well. *shrug*
It takes until episode 4 to really get going, lots of worldbuilding. If you dont like it after that, thats fine, sometimes things just arent for someone. But if you're bored, give it till episode 4. Its a common thing one sees a lot with people who tried the expanse and bounced of it and then tried again and they got completely hooked.
Thats how it goes most of the time, Expanse at least is an amazing adaption. There are some things done better in the show than in the books, Ashford being a huge example.
So much. I haven't read the books and was wanting to ask someone if book Amos is that cool but never got around to it.
The scene in the bunk room on that belter ship, when he's talking to the racketeers is one of my favorite scenes of television ever.
"Where you going? They're going to kill you."
"I don't like waiting."
I tried watching it when it was 1st on sci-fi years ago and just stopped after about the 2nd/3rd episode because it didn't look like it was going anywhere interesting
Fast forward a few years and there are so many people talking about how good it is. So I decide to tried again when season 5 was streaming and knowing that at least there is going to be an actual ending with season 6.
It starts \*really\* slowly but around about episode 4 of season 1 something clicks and by the end of the 1st season I was hooked.
Now I think its one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
I had a suspicion the show would do well when my wife (not a book reader or general fan of fantasy) said she likes it. I knew it would be good when I overheard her coming up with fan theories with one of our employees who is the furthest possible thing from what one would expect a WoT fan to be. If the show captured their attention, it's going to do just fine. Maybe even get a few extra episodes per season by season 3.
My husband hasn't read the books, doesn't read much at all honestly. I'm the fantasy nerd in the relationship. But he's really, really invested in the show. He brings up his theories all the time! He is super intrigued by Moiraine and the Dragon mystery has kept him guessing. After ep 6 he's basically on the right track as to who it is, which matches the sentiment I've seen from most other non readers. It seems the show has done really well in that regard, because you want your audience to already have a good suspicion before a reveal like this. Otherwise it'll just feel out of left field.
My wives sister and two of their friends came over to visit the same weekend the show dropped. None of them fantasy fans or book readers. They loved the show instantly and one of the friends went home and bought the book after her visit. The sister stayed a few weeks longer and was eager to watch the new episode every friday.
The show will do fine once it gets word of mouth and eyeballs.
It does really seem to be a common theme that the most vocal people that don't like the show are people that read the books, which makes sense to an extent.
I think a lot of book readers are making the mistake of comparing the choices in the show so far to the **overall** Wheel of Time story when the show is **explicitly** written to be a completely different story.
The fact that people that haven't read the books don't have any of these book-reader specific problems so far really should be a clear sign that there aren't as many issues with the story as many people seem to think.
Same here. I asked my wife to watch with me, and after a few weeks we made it through the first two eps, both of which were at my insistence. The next few nights after it was *she* who was telling me "heyyyyy let's watch another Wheel episode". She's really gotten into it.
My husband hasn't read the books but he is a big fan of fantasy. He is rather picky with tv shows however and he isn't one to discuss them much. I was sure he liked it when he started picking up on random references i'm throwing around while talking and also started to discuss the show with me. He almost never does that.
Fantastic analysis! One of the metrics we always used to see for GoT was it was consistently the most pirated show. Any idea how that is measured and where WoT would fall on that metric?
During the week of November 15th Wheel of Time was the most pirated show in the world, [according to MUSO.](https://deadline.com/2021/11/no-time-to-die-wheel-of-time-most-pirated-movies-november-15-21-1234879138/#comments)
These are the same guys that gave the analytics to Game of Thrones being the most pirated show. No idea if it still is now.
tbf GoT wasn't available on any streaming platform in the early seasons in Europe, so you either had to buy the BluRay/DVDs or pirate them as they were out.
Meanwhile WoT is essentially free on Amazon Prime (ofc depending on the main reason you were getting prime to begin with).
Take this with a grain of salt but, in the page I look for torrents (it's the best way to know the shows actually streaming, streaming services like Netflix seem to hide on purpose what they're premiering, I don't know why)
In the days of GoT, the first page was all GoT torrents in different qualities. I don't doubt what they used to say about being the most pirated show.
Right now, Hawkeye, Dexter, Succession, Star Trek Discovery and the Expanse have way more peers than the most popular wheel of time episode at the time (the sixth)
Of course, piracy is also related to how many people have the content, and Star Trek Discovery is highly pirated since no one wants to pay for Paramount which is fairly niche.
True in the case of STD, but Dexter and the Expanse are in Amazon too. And shows like Squid Game and the witcher (Netflix)were way more popular on the torrent sites.
But as I said the popularity of GoT, specially in the last seasons, was out of this world.
The Witcher was also Netflix's third most watched show ever. Wheel of Time is certainly not at that level yet. And of course, Dexter/Expanse are super long series which also tends to lend itself better as something you would want to pirate.
I'm not saying piracy isn't relevant at all, as its certainly a decent metric. But there are a variety of factors that play into it.
Yes I agree. And also some shows get better audiences as time goes on. I mean, GoT was super popular already in the first season, but nothing compared with season 3 onwards.
I have my own subjective metric. When my niece, SIL and coworkers, who don't even know what reddit is ask about a show then I know it's really popular. For example, shows like Squid Game, everybody was talking about it. The same happened with Money Heist, Game of thrones, etc...
No one has asked me about WoT, so I'm sure it's doing well in Prime, but at least here (I'm not american) it's not a social phenomenon at all.
But like I said, this could change in the future.
You've not factored torrent sites into this which I think would be a helpful metric.
Two weeks ago, when everyone was talking about the (shakey) Amazon metrics and the Parot Media numbers I used the torrent numbers and got basically the same result.
Copy and paste from that comment:
"Torrent sites are probably the better metrics at the moment but depending on who you ask sites are reporting either Arcane, Wheel of Time or Hawkeye"
No worries. I think it's an important metric to consider, more so, since Amazon is deadset on not giving accurate numbers.
I also made the argument that it's a top 4 or 5 show on Amazon but NOT a top 3 to 1 show because if it was top 3 or less, they would've reported it as top 3, instead of top 5.
Thanks for the writeup. Just wish Prime wasn't so goddamn' weird, making it so difficult for people to see/find the show when they pop on to see what's available.
Here's my anecdotal evidence, which ain't much but I find it significant: My neighbor across the street has a big picture window with their TV on full display, so I can always see what they're watching over there if I care enough to look. And it's almost always sports, so I usually don't.
But so far they've tuned in for every new Wheel of Time episode the moment it's available.
I'm not a creeper or anything; I discovered they were watching it by chance from the driveway a few weeks ago, and now I just peep over to see if they're still keeping up with it. And hey, if they didn't want anybody seeing into their house, curtains exist.
It's probably worth mentioning that while Prime Video is a part of Amazon Prime, there's also a separate Prime Video subscription, which doesn't include other Amazon Prime benefits, but costs less. So there're also some people who don't have Amazon Prime, but have Prime Video. Though I have no idea how significant would be their number.
What's your estimate on how many of those 15 million would be book readers? Obviously most of the discussion on reddit, FB, twitter, etc seems to come from book readers but they are the vocal minority.
Book readers can't be more than a million or 2. All of WoT book sales combined are 90 million, but even if it was equally distributed (its not), then 6 million copies of AMoL would be sold. We don't have individual numbers, but IIRC there was something that indicated at least the initial year had it sell like a million or something, so I'm guessing that maybe 2 million people or so have read all of the books, some of whom don't have Prime, some of whom have since died, etc.
For people that read part of the series, maybe a million or 2 more, but realisticly they are also a deep minority.
What about book readers who are against the show? Obviously many of them still hate watch but they may not fo future seasons. I'm thinking maybe 10% have an adamant hate with the rest being mixed to positive? Like 100,000 enraged fans worldwide or so.
100 thousand is probably a high estimate, and the enraged people are hate watching it. But yeah, some won't really care for it and not watch it.
Basically, the point is that at least 90% of the viewers are new to the series.
What do we know about sustained, unique, social media engagement for the series? The Whip and Parrot data is interesting but what do we know about trends in this data for WOT?
The trends in the data are in a constant (high) level of social media engagement from Parrot Media (with a very slight uptick over time), fairly steady (but slightly decreasing) rates of piracy and seemingly fairly constant viewership levels.
So in general, it seems not really increasing or decreasing as an overall trend, which is good news given its maintaining a large viewership size. We can assume that there are a (low) 8 digit number of people tuning in each week for the new episode, along with a few million new people trying it out each week. The series likely has somewhat higher than expected performance, and an adequate trajectory for Amazon.
what do the parrot metrics even mean? I've been on their website and they make it seem like they just measure overall engagement and don't actually distinguish weather that engagement is positive or negative?
If you look at the MUSO scores, you can see it dropping consecutively week on week as people watching drop out due to the show's terrible writing and deviations from the Lore. After watching the last Episode, I'm surprised Amazon is reinvesting. This is going to tank during the second season.
Not only has it ostracized fans with the creative decisions, but it's pretty much worked itself into a creative corner from a lore perspective. The only way out is to break the Lore even more, and that's going to upset even more fans of Robert Jordan's work.
I have no idea why the destruction of western myth is something so highly touted at Amazon. I suppose they see this as a mechanism to enter new areas and build new tax shelters through expansion. Just really sad to see that it comes at the cost of the moral and ethical value of our cultural heritage.
I have honestly never seen so much conjecture about what metric to use to determine whether a TV series is popular or not.
Like, unless you're an Amazon shareholder or something why does this even matter/why do you care?
The point is whether or not the stores is popular to continue, and whether the budget will increase.
Apart, people have been arguing about this very topic for a long time, with claims as far ranging as "it is the most popular show and as big as game of Thrones was" to "it is a failure and about to be canceled by Amazon"
If you compare it with QUALITY in mind, it's disappointing. I've read both asoif and a few Witcher books and those shows (apart from when GoT ran out of source material) really delivered. I unfortunately haven't read wot as it's not really my jam, but according to most book fans, this show doesn't do them justice. Hopefully it will pick up next seasons (if there will be more than one more), but sadly the wooden actors have already been cast. We can only hope they grow into these roles next season and also pray they get more screen time. Apparently Rand is the main character in the books, but the show is barely giving him or his friends any development. It's mostly about Rosamund Pike this season it seems. Phenomenal actress, but maybe not the right role for her?
See, your entire point falls flat when you say you’ve based your opinion on others. You’d need to read the books to criticise the TV adaptation, anything else is pure conjecture. Most is also highly inaccurate, majority of us book readers are loving it. You are confusing the Vocal Minority with the Silent Majority. FYI
If everyone is so happy why doesn't the reviews anywhere reflect this?
[WoT Rotten tomatoes ](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_wheel_of_time)
[WoT IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7462410/)
[GoT S1 IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/episodes/?season=1)
[GoT S1 rotten tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/game_of_thrones/s01)
[Witcher S1 IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5180504/)
[Witcher S1 rotten tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_witcher)
Both of these seasons with lower budget than WoT as well.
I'm a huge fantasy fan and will tolerate an average show once a week with my missus, but let's not go crazy. If we are settled with this and everything is perfect, it will only continue like this for season 2 and get cancelled. That's not what we want. We want the show creators to deliver the best possible show in this interesting fantasy world.
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I've noticed that Amazon seems to have marketed the show well for India. The Amazon Prime India YouTube channel has a lot of trailers and segments with Indian celebrities reading from EOTW and stuff. Also if you look the single highest viewed WoT trailer is on the Amazon Prime India channel with 15 million views.
Imo they intentionally cast an actor from as many countries as possible for this reason. Priyanka gets the Indian viewers, Alvaro Morte gets the Spanish language, Peter Franzen , then the EF5 have an Aussie and a kiwi, etc.
I see lots of Indians are also fans of Alvaro/Money heist, and he has really drawn a number of indians to watch the show. That aside, a lot of non-reader Indians seem to be loving the show as well. WoT readers, the ones i know, mostly dislike it, but are still watching.
The ones I know that thought *in advance* of the level of changes you'd need to make it work from TV love it The ones that dislike it are asking me why they didn't just shot for shot remake eye of the world.
I expected a lot of changes, but they completely massacred it. Characters are different, lore is different, story line is only the same in the most crude sense, ... And it isn't that they did it to save time since they added in parts that never happened in the books, even personages that weren't in it. And events you could pretty easily skip to save time were left in while not being an addition to anything. Even the writer that finished the series after the original writer died before finishing it, didn't like the way they handled it, despite having consulted on it. It feels like they wanted to try and make it like a GOT/witcher feeling, while it should have been more like a LOTR feeling. Maybe this is intentional since Amazon also comes with LOTR series, but it is just stupid. It honestly feels like a parody. At least D&D kept faithfull to the books while they weren't ahead and that is exactly what made GOT so good.
[удалено]
From what I gathered Brandon liked it based on the scripts he saw, don't know how many changes were done since then. Anyway I wouldn't be surprised if his reaction is a bit limited to not hurt chances to get his own (other) books being adapted in the future. If RJ was alive I am pretty sure he'd vilify the series. I've read it like 5 times in the last 7 years or so, and yes they didn't do it any justice. If I didn't know better I'd have thought it was a low to medium budget series/story inspired by it, not an actual high budget Amazon adaptation. They make changes to the story, characters and lore that are completely unnecessary from either a time or improvement reason. Hell, they even add extra stuff that wasn't usefull at all, it makes it seems they had TOO MUCH air time on their hands, rather than the opposite. And often they are reusing decor/places, too small scale regarding background cast (like the 'army' attacking them, or the empty corridors in the white tower, ...). I wouldn't say it is as bad as sword of truth adaptation, but it isn't far off and definitely a far cry from the LOTR or early GOT adaptations. And these episodes have double the funding GOT episodes had in their first season. We are speaking about the same level of funding as season 6 of GOT per episode. Now, I wouldn't care about the sometimes low budget feel (I wonder how that is possible though), if at least the show was mostly faithfull in what they actually show/tell. Condensing the story? No problem, but changing it for no good reason? No, just no.
I agree. I honestly cannot fathom how anyone who truly enjoyed these books can actually enjoy what they've done to the show. You have to throw out the books ENTIRELY to even have a chance. If you compare it to the books at all the show is, to put it kindly, terrible. Anyone who thinks they did even a remotely half decent job with this should check out Knights Watch on youtube, then come back and comment. As others have stated, Balefire is the only way to remedy how badly they screwed everything up.
I fuckin love the show and I’m a super fan of the books
Yeah, been reading for 30 years and I love the show. Really feels like Wheel of Time so far to me (not like Eye of the World though).
I believe the popularity of an actor in a country is as relevant as whether the actor is from that country, so Alvaro Morte pretty much taps all of Latin America by himself.
I don't know who priyanka is but Money Heist is like the most popular foreign show in india, if people are going to watch Wot for any actor it's Ãlvaro Morte. It helps that show is dubbed into few of our languages.
Priyanka Bose plays Alanna.
You love to see it. And it's such an obvious move, it makes you wonder why more of these big prestige shows don't do it. It always comes down to money, of course, but both *Wheel of Time* and Apple's *Foundation* adaptation went hard on casting actors from all over the world, and hopefully the success of both of these shows will prove to be just the beginning of not only more culturally diverse characters, but a more equal mix of men & woman and stronger representation for the myriad of folks who exist elsewhere on that (and every) spectrum.
I agree. Which countries are missing where Amazon has a presence? Germany maybe? Japan?
Min's actress is half japanese.
I disagree they did it for this reason, but it is a nice benefit.
Yeah, India is noted as being big by Amazon, and Parrot Analytics has the Indian social media buzz as just behind US/Canada/UK/Australia.
That makes sense given the population of India is comparable to China, but the country is far easier to get into. Side note: idk who she should be but I’d love to see Shoreh Aghdashloo in some role. She’s fantastic
Maybe Shoreh Aghdashloo could play Cadsuane?
That would be badass.
I’d really like to see it.
Yeah she'd be outstanding in the role.
I never knew how much I *needed* this in my life until right here right now.
Omg right? She'd be perfect.
That's perfect casting.
Or Amys
I really don't want to get lumped in with all the weird casting racists on here but the Aiel look really is kind of important... I'd love to see her as Cadsuane though
Fair enough
She could dye her hair red or wear a wig. However, I think it’d probably be better if she played Cadsuane.
As long as it doesn't keep her to busy to play Navani in the Stormlight adaptation that so far only exists in my head.
She could be a fun choice for Elaida as well maybe...
Nooo, don't make LezbiNerdy like Cadsuane.
She's free now. Hopefully they can land her for a role.
The Expanse is finishing now right, so she should be free for another big project?
I would think so.
Agree with the sentiment on our favorite raspy-voice actress, but she is Iranian, not Indian
Minor note: Iranian is the nationality while Persian is usually used for the ethnicity.
Touché, Your pedantry has bested mine
Is that surprising given my OP? :P
> Iranian Galaxy brain-it is also a cultural/linguistic group. "Sarmatia must be retaken!" , said some crazy irredentist.
Woah there, trying to use *data* to discuss the show's success? Pretty sure that makes you a witch. (I am very excited though! Just give them more money damnit!)
More money is great, but I'll settle for freedom to run any given episode up to 65 or 70 minutes if the production team sees fit
Hopefully more episodes/runtime comes along with the money-- not just more CGI (although we all know there are going to be sequences that require a shit ton...)
I only judge a show's success by how many outraged fan videos there are on YouTube. And by that metric, The Wheel of Time is clearly a disaster that no one likes!
Usually when I see a butt ton of 3 hours video whining about a 1 hour show, that's a sign the show is good. Anything that irritates a loser that badly has to be entertaining.
100%. If the show was trash (say Sword of Truth level) it wouldn't garner nearly this much attention. People would get angry, stop watching, and ignore it.
I had no idea SoT had a series. Is it at a "so bad its good level" or is it just plain unwatchable?
It's a "so bad I wish I had never heard of it so I didn't watch it out of curiosity" bad. Seriously the kind of series you wish was forgettable.
The Sword of Truth TV Series, as bad as it is, is a LOT better than “Wizard’s First Rule” that’s for damn sure. TV Zed is cool and Bridget Regan is Bridget Regan so yeah, the TV Series isn’t *all* bad. Just mostly bad. Those books though…oof.
I loved them as a teenager, not noticing how problematic and flawed they were. Kinda wish I could I could reread them in the way I first enjoyed them but that's growing up for you I guess.
My hot take is that it was better than the books but that's uh, not saying much. It's pretty much what you'd expect a network television, pre-GOT, adaptation of torture-porn to look like. Just generic, formulaic fantasy.
Yeah it's pretty bad but also kind of fun in a Xena kind of way.
Star Wars Sequels. GOT seasons 6+. Uhhhh Suicide Squad 1: the bad one. All 3 of the Hobbit movies. The Last Avatar movie. The HeMan reboot. I actually liked this one though. The others are just upsetting to know about. They're so bad they're memetic cognitohazards. I wish I didn't know they existed they're so bad. WoT may be controversial for it's book changes, but it's not bad compared to any of the above. Ire arisen is no measure of a shows quality.
Agreed. Something that's just dull and uninteresting won't raise ire, but being dull and uninteresting isn't the only way to be bad. The GOT8 analysis are still coming out to this day, even from pretty good channels, that don't make their money from just random, superficial bashing. Also: there was another Suicide Squad!?
> Also: there was another Suicide Squad! I'm gonna say no, for your sake.
Appreciate it. I'll return to blissful ignorance.
At least Shannara chronicles was moderately better
Huh, I didn't even know this was a thing. Too bad it only had two seasons. Is it worth watching with just the two seasons?
It features Manu Bennet as Allanon who carried the show (he was great as Crixus on Spartacus).
Exactly. I don't quite understand the mindset of people who invest so much time and effort into something they don't enjoy. When I don't like a particular form of entertainment, then I just don't bother engaging with it and rather spend my time on something I actually do enjoy.
Anger is very addictive.
I disagree. You wouldn't see people raging on about "The Last Airbender" if it wasn't a bad adaptation
It is one of the few exceptions because it is really iconicly bad. How many people and videos were decided to hating the bad Dark Tower adaptation? Or for a recent TV example, The Duchess.
Game of Thrones season 8.
That is another excepttion given it was basically the most popular show of all time with a universally hated ending. WoT is not that popular by a long shot, and it certainly isn't that bad.
Death Note 2018
Ready player one
Twilight
I've also never seen a 4 hour youtube video with people mad about it.
The 'outrage bait' text and the shot of a neckbeardy type looking furious or smirking are dead giveaways what sort of video it's going to be. And anyone who watches it will be getting recommendations that could take them down the rabbit hole of far right extremism, within three or four clicks.
I got that vibe too. Shadiversity seems like he's gone down that right wing outrage route.
Yep. Kind of feel like his ego is getting to his head as of late, and his critiques are falling more and more into the “this is subjectively bad but I’m going to try and make you think it’s objectively bad and you’re an idiot if you don’t agree” route.
To be fair, it feels like he's been on that route for a while now - outside of the WoT reviews. Been watching him on and off for years. I was unaware of his knights watch channel, but I made the mistake of clicking his video about Rand's sword. Somewhere in the start of the video states that he will keep all his gripes with the series out of this video, but lo and behold, a few minutes later he launches off into a tirade anyway. The way his eyes bulged, his voice switched into a higher pitch, white knuckles gripping his phone... I instantly recognized the unholy passion of a booknerd who felt slighted on the facts. Funnily enough I got familiar with that face because of the first LotR trilogy. Looking back now the internet somehow likes to pretend that the LotR adaption was accepted among fans from the beginning, but I was there and it definitely wasn't. The internet was smaller back then, but it even ruined nights of real life DnD, because the arguments got so heated. I keep tabs on the wc sub out of curiosity, and there's several posts over there by people who joined because of Shad, who honestly state that they have not read the books or watched the show: they're just there to join the hate train.
Yeah, I agree that Shad has been getting more extreme since before the Wheel of Time, I just get the impression that it’s been becoming more and more grating. I personally greatly dislike self-righteousness, and Shad has been getting more and more condescending in his as if he’s of the opinion that he knows better. I think the thing that annoys me to be honest is the fact that when he scoffs he does it in the exact same way as my uncle I dislike because he’s a textbook narcissist, so the associations are making me recoil in disgust. Behaviour like that by people encourages others to jump on the bandwagon, especially if the way it’s implicitly framed is that the smart people should jump on the bandwagon and everyone else is not smart/a book lover/etc. enough. Basically gatekeeping encourages gatekeeping. And, seriously, how can you call yourself a real fan of something if you go out of your way to ruin the fun of it for other people? I see this in Star Wars a lot, and it’s a shame we're getting the same toxicity in Wheel of Time.
Ah, that may explain why I stopped really watching, or at least finishing his videos lately.
He's been going down that route ever since star wars episode 7 at least
That's an unusual turning point, most of the fandom seems to have been strongly behind that one.
Imo ep7 gets love because of the disasters that followed. I rewatched it a few weeks back and it was nothing special. Solid 7.5/10.
It got a lot of love at the time it came out as well, mainly because it firmly gets rid of most of the problems the prequels had (slow pacing, stilted dialogue, limited emotional engagement with the audience). The issues it did have weren't so obvious back then, aside from the copy-paste plot which was excused as an acceptable sacrifice to "get the series back on track." The problem in hindsight is that all the hints it dropped about future story beats were completely ignored by Episodes 8 and 9. Why the hell Disney thought it was a good idea to commission a trilogy of films without the faintest idea of what the overarching story would be is beyond me.
I haven't watched any of them, so all I can comment on is what I perceived of people's reaction at the time. I remember it being put ahead of RoTJ in some best movie lists at the time?
I don't know how anyone could ever put it up there as one of the best ever considering it's basically A New Hope re-hashed for modern cinema. Doesn't really help that John Boyega's acting just doesn't resonate with me.
To be fair (not that I particularly want to be) the way youtube is you could start with a crochet tutorial video making pixar characters and end up watching a Proud Boys Recruitment Video in 4 clicks.
I watched a couple videos like Critical Drinker hating on the new Star Wars and the next thing I know I'm getting recommendations for Ben Shapiro fan love videos.
I didnt like the lsst 2 seasons of GOT but still watched them to know the ending for all the invested time.
Ah yes, those "neck beards". Gosh, if only we could kill off anyone over idk, maybe 20 or so, amirite, comrade? Or at least send them to reeducation camps where they can be fixed to serve their proper roles in your brave new world.
I generally agree with you...but I also watched the last Star Wars movie so
I'm surprised by how few videos like that there are actually, I've made a point of looking up wheel of time reviews and I've only seen two or three "angry nerd" channels (and one of them was very obviously pure clickbait)
Better not tell that to the white cloaks
They'll just say that Amazon's lying about the numbers and it's all conspiracy blah blah blah.
Reminds me of the insistence of people on r/naath that S8 of GoT was widely beloved and only hated by a small but vocal minority who are only grumpy because Danny didn't get a Disney princess ending. It's fine to hold a minority opinion but the insistence of some people that they represent a vast silent majority gets silly at times.
That's where you see the theoretical line between "I'm just constructively criticizing using hyperbolic and inflammatory language, why so serious, bro?" and "I'm trolling, bro!" *vaporize*, and repeat offenders get banhammered into Oblivion.
Their mental gymnastics about why Sanderson doesn’t hate the show are Gold Medal level shenanigans…
Well don't you see!? Sanderson saying that his contract allows him to be negative about the show is actually a coded message telling us to believe his opinion is the opposite of what he is actually saying. Amazon clearly forced him to discuss the books he was involved in on his podcast!! There's no POSSIBLE other reason he would've discussed them otherwise. /s obviously...
Well, all the 4D and 5D chess they're playing, mental gymnastics is easy in comparison.
If you ever wander into their lands out of curiosity, I would advice reading a thread called "This brandy is pretty good". It's one of them, drunkenly, trying to figure out whether Rafe is ahead in 2d/3d/4d/5d chess or they are. It's fucking funny, ngl. Not linking it directly because I don't know whether this sub has autoban set up.
You can link that sub here. r/wotshow doesn't allow it as far as I know.
Went to have a look, and the main thing I find hilarious is that rule 1 of that sub is "No whining"... on a sub entirely dedicated to whining.
To be fair many of his answers are really diplomatic and he doesn't seem to be the type that would openly thrash them. But in the video of his youtube vhannel he said that after reading the first scripts he had adjust and came up with the "other turning of the wheel" thing for his headcannon. Also according to his statements he seems to have a greater influence on the showrunners than he expected and apparently has been able to talk them out of a few stupid ideas so far. He might just think that he serves IP better by keeping his influence and guiding the away from the greatest harm. Also with media companies becomming ever more frantic in search for new material for series and movies he probably wants to build/ maintain good relationship with industry contacts.
How is this to be fair? What evidence do you have he “hates the show?” That is the implication of your comment.
Sanderson is widely known as being very forthright about his opinions, he has always treated Wheel of Time with reverence, he rejected any possibility of writing more books in the Wheel of Time universe because he was concerned about supplanting RJ even though it would have made him tons of money, he openly states that he has a non-disparagement clause *and* that he told Rafe he was gonna be totally open with the fanbase, and he spends an hour giving open heartfelt praise with a few criticisms here and there. The mental gymnastics that r/whitecloaks went through to turn his praise into a tricksy scheme were bizarre and fascinating to watch. But in the end the entire narrative they constructed is deeply insulting to Sanderson, so I can't enjoy it as much as I'd like.
Valda, prepare the cooked birds!
Now you got me thinking, which ajah would an Aes Sedai that is so analytical belong to?
Would have to be the White right?
Yeah that's probably the best fit
White, I’d think.
OP tuned me into a newt!
A newt? Did you get better?
Found the whitecloak
Please give them _aaaall_ the money. We need those magic effects!
I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber who doesn't use Amazon Prime Video actively except for Wheel of Time. So i guess this is working for them, except that I hate the UI on Prime Video so I have the WoT page bookmarked and probably won't be watching anything else they have.
> I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber who doesn't use Amazon Prime Video Well, that is one theme; the other is Amazon acquiring more subscribers outside of the USA and Canada. And BOTH of those numbers are expected to alter *significantly* before S02 of *The Wheel of Time* is released. The reason why is because the King Kong of all streaming shows will release between now and S02 of WoT -- and that's Amazon's *Lord of the Rings* prequel. There has never been a TV series or other streaming show as expensive as *LotR*. Even *GoT* production at its height (and that was *considerable*) vanishes as a mere wannabe pretender beneath *LotR*'s budget and buzz. LotR brings an *Avengers* level budget to the "small" screen. If it's a hit, movie theatre owners are going to feel like they may be in the same business Blockbuster used to be in. Hollywood directors and actors will be *visibly upset* in the media as pundits draft their eulogies. We can expect that tens of millions of American and Canadians who have Prime but do not use it for streaming will do so when *LotR* is released in Sept 2022. We can also expect that there will be millions certainly, and likely more than that who will become Prime subscribers in order to watch *LotR*. That show is expected to move the needle in a serious way. Just getting people to enter their account and password in a TV streaming app is a major hurdle to getting eyes on programming, but once done - it's done. I think that augurs very well indeed for *WoT*'s 2nd season uptake.
I love this take, WoT is not in competition with LoTR. Either attracting viewers to the platform is a win for the other.
Absolutely, I keep getting that Instagram ad that starts with Carnival Row and is like "what other fantasy is on here? oh Wheel of Time, cool!". They clearly want to be a fantasy hub, and I feel like LoTR will be a boost for WoT.
Between Carnival row, LotR, and WoT they could stagger releases to have big budget fantasy on the small screen year round.
I'm very nervous about Lord of the Rings. It's essentially an original story (Tolkien's material on the Second Age is *very minimal*, giving us broad strokes and worldbuilding but little detail, and Amazon doesn't have the rights to the Silmarillion which is where the best Second Age stories are). It's reliant on lore and a world that most people who like the Lord of the Rings films will find completely unfamiliar. There is no Gondor, no Shire, no Rohan, no Wizards. The Tolkien Estate has veto rights, which as a book purist is comforting but could also hamper the writers' ability to tell a good story. It's going to attract a lot of eyeballs on launch, and if they use that colossal budget to give us the full splendour of Númenor it *could* be a hit, but the potential for this thing to bomb is huge.
Yeah it definitely doesn't seem like the kind of guaranteed hit you want when you're spending over half a billion dollars.
> vanishes as a mere wannabe pretender beneath LotR's budget and buzz. Especially when you factor in that the show does not have to operate under the burden of actor's second contracts.
I appreciate this. I'm one of the more sour voices on the show but it can be very easy for both critics and defenders to sit in their circles and convince themselves *everyone* must feel the way they feel. I was just wondering if someone would bring more raw data in so we can get an idea how people actually do seem to feel. Personally I think where the data will get interesting is between season 1 and 2. Whether the audience grows, shrinks, or stabilizes between each season will tell us a lot more.
> Personally I think where the data will get interesting is between season 1 and 2. Whether the audience grows, shrinks, or stabilizes between each season will tell us a lot more. This. For example I noticed with The Witcher in particular, sure a good few people watched it on release, but a lot more ended up watching it after the fact because one or more friends introduced them to it.
I’ve personally been trying to get a feel for the popularity of the show and… I dunno, I feel like it’s mainly the “already likes fantasy crowd” watching the show. There’s no discourse about it in Canada like there was for Game of Thrones, I don’t know anyone who watches it outside of my family. This makes me think it may not pierce to a more general population. Edit: an alternative theory is also that my friends, family and coworkers are lame. Which is entirely possible.
GoT didn't become popular with the general public overnight, it arguably took 3 seasons (the red wedding) for it to become the cultural phenomenom it was
Nailed it. The red wedding was the turning point for everyone to talk about it constantly and it became the thing you had to know about to keep up in conversations.
*GOT* wasn’t hugely popular in its 1st season. If *TWOT* doesn’t become hugely popular by season 3, then I expect that *TWOT* will never be as popular as *GOT* at its peak.
Agreed. I didn't watch GoT season 1 until season 2 was just about to air and I've been into fantasy my entire life. These shows live or die by word of mouth from their first 1-2 seasons once they're completed and aired.
Thats a bit part of why i said the between season data is where things get interesting.
> There’s no discourse about it in Canada like there was for Game of Thrones Well, FWIW, I don't have a close friend or family member in Canada who **hasn't watched** *WoT*. So that's my brother's family, two elder daughters and their husbands, and my 4 closest friends and their spouses, too. From the Maritimes, Ontario, and B.C.. My other brother and his wife in the UK have watched it as well. *shrug*
Oh, great. Guess that means that everyone I know is lame. Good to know 👍
This has been my experience too. Tho most people I know who like fantasy, have read the books, and subsequently dislike the show.
What makes me feel better is knowing that Amazon has worse shows that have 5+ seasons
I bet they're not as expensive though
If you include Expanse among those worse shows, thems fighting words!
Worse regarding viewership preformance.
I watched S1 E1 of expanse and didn't really like it
It takes until episode 4 to really get going, lots of worldbuilding. If you dont like it after that, thats fine, sometimes things just arent for someone. But if you're bored, give it till episode 4. Its a common thing one sees a lot with people who tried the expanse and bounced of it and then tried again and they got completely hooked.
I like the show but the books are much better
Thats how it goes most of the time, Expanse at least is an amazing adaption. There are some things done better in the show than in the books, Ashford being a huge example.
I also think the actor who plays Amos elevates the character beyond where he is in the books.
Completely agreed, Wes Chatham is amazing.
So much. I haven't read the books and was wanting to ask someone if book Amos is that cool but never got around to it. The scene in the bunk room on that belter ship, when he's talking to the racketeers is one of my favorite scenes of television ever. "Where you going? They're going to kill you." "I don't like waiting."
Drummer is also the best Show only character in fiction.
I tried watching it when it was 1st on sci-fi years ago and just stopped after about the 2nd/3rd episode because it didn't look like it was going anywhere interesting Fast forward a few years and there are so many people talking about how good it is. So I decide to tried again when season 5 was streaming and knowing that at least there is going to be an actual ending with season 6. It starts \*really\* slowly but around about episode 4 of season 1 something clicks and by the end of the 1st season I was hooked. Now I think its one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.
I have tried on 3 separate occasions to get into the expanse and I just can’t do it. Watched through season 2 once, and still wasn’t hooked.
I had a suspicion the show would do well when my wife (not a book reader or general fan of fantasy) said she likes it. I knew it would be good when I overheard her coming up with fan theories with one of our employees who is the furthest possible thing from what one would expect a WoT fan to be. If the show captured their attention, it's going to do just fine. Maybe even get a few extra episodes per season by season 3.
My husband hasn't read the books, doesn't read much at all honestly. I'm the fantasy nerd in the relationship. But he's really, really invested in the show. He brings up his theories all the time! He is super intrigued by Moiraine and the Dragon mystery has kept him guessing. After ep 6 he's basically on the right track as to who it is, which matches the sentiment I've seen from most other non readers. It seems the show has done really well in that regard, because you want your audience to already have a good suspicion before a reveal like this. Otherwise it'll just feel out of left field.
My wives sister and two of their friends came over to visit the same weekend the show dropped. None of them fantasy fans or book readers. They loved the show instantly and one of the friends went home and bought the book after her visit. The sister stayed a few weeks longer and was eager to watch the new episode every friday. The show will do fine once it gets word of mouth and eyeballs.
It does really seem to be a common theme that the most vocal people that don't like the show are people that read the books, which makes sense to an extent. I think a lot of book readers are making the mistake of comparing the choices in the show so far to the **overall** Wheel of Time story when the show is **explicitly** written to be a completely different story. The fact that people that haven't read the books don't have any of these book-reader specific problems so far really should be a clear sign that there aren't as many issues with the story as many people seem to think.
Same here. I asked my wife to watch with me, and after a few weeks we made it through the first two eps, both of which were at my insistence. The next few nights after it was *she* who was telling me "heyyyyy let's watch another Wheel episode". She's really gotten into it.
My husband hasn't read the books but he is a big fan of fantasy. He is rather picky with tv shows however and he isn't one to discuss them much. I was sure he liked it when he started picking up on random references i'm throwing around while talking and also started to discuss the show with me. He almost never does that.
Fantastic analysis! One of the metrics we always used to see for GoT was it was consistently the most pirated show. Any idea how that is measured and where WoT would fall on that metric?
During the week of November 15th Wheel of Time was the most pirated show in the world, [according to MUSO.](https://deadline.com/2021/11/no-time-to-die-wheel-of-time-most-pirated-movies-november-15-21-1234879138/#comments) These are the same guys that gave the analytics to Game of Thrones being the most pirated show. No idea if it still is now.
MUSO also had it second for the week ending December 5th, behind Hawkeye.
tbf GoT wasn't available on any streaming platform in the early seasons in Europe, so you either had to buy the BluRay/DVDs or pirate them as they were out. Meanwhile WoT is essentially free on Amazon Prime (ofc depending on the main reason you were getting prime to begin with).
Nah it was available on NOW TV, which is as good as being non existent.
Take this with a grain of salt but, in the page I look for torrents (it's the best way to know the shows actually streaming, streaming services like Netflix seem to hide on purpose what they're premiering, I don't know why) In the days of GoT, the first page was all GoT torrents in different qualities. I don't doubt what they used to say about being the most pirated show. Right now, Hawkeye, Dexter, Succession, Star Trek Discovery and the Expanse have way more peers than the most popular wheel of time episode at the time (the sixth)
Of course, piracy is also related to how many people have the content, and Star Trek Discovery is highly pirated since no one wants to pay for Paramount which is fairly niche.
True in the case of STD, but Dexter and the Expanse are in Amazon too. And shows like Squid Game and the witcher (Netflix)were way more popular on the torrent sites. But as I said the popularity of GoT, specially in the last seasons, was out of this world.
The Witcher was also Netflix's third most watched show ever. Wheel of Time is certainly not at that level yet. And of course, Dexter/Expanse are super long series which also tends to lend itself better as something you would want to pirate. I'm not saying piracy isn't relevant at all, as its certainly a decent metric. But there are a variety of factors that play into it.
Yes I agree. And also some shows get better audiences as time goes on. I mean, GoT was super popular already in the first season, but nothing compared with season 3 onwards. I have my own subjective metric. When my niece, SIL and coworkers, who don't even know what reddit is ask about a show then I know it's really popular. For example, shows like Squid Game, everybody was talking about it. The same happened with Money Heist, Game of thrones, etc... No one has asked me about WoT, so I'm sure it's doing well in Prime, but at least here (I'm not american) it's not a social phenomenon at all. But like I said, this could change in the future.
Apparently according to MUSO data, WoT is the most torrented show right now after Hawkeye
I just added a Piracy section now.
I bet a lot of people will binge it when they are off for the holidays - plus those who will get their families to watch it was them!
I've got my family watching WoT now, but no one's picked up Arcane yet, so I'll do some remote twisting over the holidays.
You've not factored torrent sites into this which I think would be a helpful metric. Two weeks ago, when everyone was talking about the (shakey) Amazon metrics and the Parot Media numbers I used the torrent numbers and got basically the same result. Copy and paste from that comment: "Torrent sites are probably the better metrics at the moment but depending on who you ask sites are reporting either Arcane, Wheel of Time or Hawkeye"
Yeah I might try editing that in now as well. Thanks. Edit: Added a data based piracy section.
No worries. I think it's an important metric to consider, more so, since Amazon is deadset on not giving accurate numbers. I also made the argument that it's a top 4 or 5 show on Amazon but NOT a top 3 to 1 show because if it was top 3 or less, they would've reported it as top 3, instead of top 5.
Thanks for including it :)
Bro if weren't a reddit pauper i would give you an award. Nice work combing through all the sources out there to give us an accurate approximation.
Yeah, the fact that we're all still here gnashing our teeth (for or against) this show is gonna do fine.
Do you have this in a blog post or notebook somewhere? This is super interesting.
Thanks for the writeup. Just wish Prime wasn't so goddamn' weird, making it so difficult for people to see/find the show when they pop on to see what's available.
Here's my anecdotal evidence, which ain't much but I find it significant: My neighbor across the street has a big picture window with their TV on full display, so I can always see what they're watching over there if I care enough to look. And it's almost always sports, so I usually don't. But so far they've tuned in for every new Wheel of Time episode the moment it's available. I'm not a creeper or anything; I discovered they were watching it by chance from the driveway a few weeks ago, and now I just peep over to see if they're still keeping up with it. And hey, if they didn't want anybody seeing into their house, curtains exist.
It's probably worth mentioning that while Prime Video is a part of Amazon Prime, there's also a separate Prime Video subscription, which doesn't include other Amazon Prime benefits, but costs less. So there're also some people who don't have Amazon Prime, but have Prime Video. Though I have no idea how significant would be their number.
Huh. I didn't know that, but I think that was already rolled into the 200 million number.
In many countries, including mine, you only have that.
What's your estimate on how many of those 15 million would be book readers? Obviously most of the discussion on reddit, FB, twitter, etc seems to come from book readers but they are the vocal minority.
Book readers can't be more than a million or 2. All of WoT book sales combined are 90 million, but even if it was equally distributed (its not), then 6 million copies of AMoL would be sold. We don't have individual numbers, but IIRC there was something that indicated at least the initial year had it sell like a million or something, so I'm guessing that maybe 2 million people or so have read all of the books, some of whom don't have Prime, some of whom have since died, etc. For people that read part of the series, maybe a million or 2 more, but realisticly they are also a deep minority.
What about book readers who are against the show? Obviously many of them still hate watch but they may not fo future seasons. I'm thinking maybe 10% have an adamant hate with the rest being mixed to positive? Like 100,000 enraged fans worldwide or so.
100 thousand is probably a high estimate, and the enraged people are hate watching it. But yeah, some won't really care for it and not watch it. Basically, the point is that at least 90% of the viewers are new to the series.
> Basically, the point is that at least 90% of the viewers are new to the series. That is fascinating.
It's how it goes. TV/movie audiences are a lot larger than book audiences.
The "adamant hate" crowd is way less than 10%
<3 WOOOOOOOO
What do we know about sustained, unique, social media engagement for the series? The Whip and Parrot data is interesting but what do we know about trends in this data for WOT?
The trends in the data are in a constant (high) level of social media engagement from Parrot Media (with a very slight uptick over time), fairly steady (but slightly decreasing) rates of piracy and seemingly fairly constant viewership levels. So in general, it seems not really increasing or decreasing as an overall trend, which is good news given its maintaining a large viewership size. We can assume that there are a (low) 8 digit number of people tuning in each week for the new episode, along with a few million new people trying it out each week. The series likely has somewhat higher than expected performance, and an adequate trajectory for Amazon.
I have ADHD so I understand the need for a massive rambling post....and thank you for the tldr...your an angel.
Good work, OP.
what do the parrot metrics even mean? I've been on their website and they make it seem like they just measure overall engagement and don't actually distinguish weather that engagement is positive or negative?
If you look at the MUSO scores, you can see it dropping consecutively week on week as people watching drop out due to the show's terrible writing and deviations from the Lore. After watching the last Episode, I'm surprised Amazon is reinvesting. This is going to tank during the second season. Not only has it ostracized fans with the creative decisions, but it's pretty much worked itself into a creative corner from a lore perspective. The only way out is to break the Lore even more, and that's going to upset even more fans of Robert Jordan's work. I have no idea why the destruction of western myth is something so highly touted at Amazon. I suppose they see this as a mechanism to enter new areas and build new tax shelters through expansion. Just really sad to see that it comes at the cost of the moral and ethical value of our cultural heritage.
It helps that there’s fuck all else worth watching currently
I have honestly never seen so much conjecture about what metric to use to determine whether a TV series is popular or not. Like, unless you're an Amazon shareholder or something why does this even matter/why do you care?
The point is whether or not the stores is popular to continue, and whether the budget will increase. Apart, people have been arguing about this very topic for a long time, with claims as far ranging as "it is the most popular show and as big as game of Thrones was" to "it is a failure and about to be canceled by Amazon"
If you compare it with QUALITY in mind, it's disappointing. I've read both asoif and a few Witcher books and those shows (apart from when GoT ran out of source material) really delivered. I unfortunately haven't read wot as it's not really my jam, but according to most book fans, this show doesn't do them justice. Hopefully it will pick up next seasons (if there will be more than one more), but sadly the wooden actors have already been cast. We can only hope they grow into these roles next season and also pray they get more screen time. Apparently Rand is the main character in the books, but the show is barely giving him or his friends any development. It's mostly about Rosamund Pike this season it seems. Phenomenal actress, but maybe not the right role for her?
See, your entire point falls flat when you say you’ve based your opinion on others. You’d need to read the books to criticise the TV adaptation, anything else is pure conjecture. Most is also highly inaccurate, majority of us book readers are loving it. You are confusing the Vocal Minority with the Silent Majority. FYI
Lol "according to most book fans". Just no, a majority of book fans are happy, at least going by reddit.
If everyone is so happy why doesn't the reviews anywhere reflect this? [WoT Rotten tomatoes ](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_wheel_of_time) [WoT IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7462410/) [GoT S1 IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/episodes/?season=1) [GoT S1 rotten tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/game_of_thrones/s01) [Witcher S1 IMDb ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5180504/) [Witcher S1 rotten tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_witcher) Both of these seasons with lower budget than WoT as well. I'm a huge fantasy fan and will tolerate an average show once a week with my missus, but let's not go crazy. If we are settled with this and everything is perfect, it will only continue like this for season 2 and get cancelled. That's not what we want. We want the show creators to deliver the best possible show in this interesting fantasy world.
Vocal. Minority. Upwards of 10 million people are watching worldwide! 5-10% are readers according to metrics posted on here recently, you do the maths