I'll preface this by saying I've read the books, so there's an expectation coming into the series about what to expect. I watched the first 2 episodes and it wnet at such breakneck speed that huge swathes of the story were obliterated in the interest of pace. It was like watching an action focused synopsis of the books. The world building was absent and concepts like the Aes Sedai sects, warders, the corruption of the magical source on the source side, the whitecloaks etc were very briefly and quite poorly explained, so that without having read the books it's difficult to link the relationships of the various things to each other. In addition, with Rosamund Pike being the only notable actor in the cast the story focus seems to have shifted to her instead of with the Two Rivers characters as intended in the story.
So, having decided that the concept of a true adaptation had gone out the window I instead elected to focus on watching the show on its own merits. The performances are uneven, with some actors being quite good and some others being charitably not quite so good. The pacing remains poor, as if the tv series wants to encompass all the rather lengthy books into a very short time. Admittedly this is necessary, but the initial books are very important and some of the middle books could have been whittled a lot with affecting the overall plot, so the whittling should take place there and not at the beginning. Since the show is moving away from the books anyway Some of the early world building to ground your audience in the story would have been good. There's just simply not enough depth to either the story or the characters, and where something like Game of Thrones took some chances and made some daring choices the Wheel of Time series seems utterly safe and rather pedestrian. There are some unimportant but also unnecessary nods to inclusivity that seem unwarranted by either the story or the character texture, but again, not really important.
At this point I have watched the first season. My overall impression is "meh" and I'm up in the air as to whether I will bother to watch the second season or not. Much like the Terry Goodkin "seeker" adaptation there was a wealth of good source material that was basically left on the floor so that a rather average condensed story could be produced in a hurry. It seems like they were in a hurry to capitalize on the success of GOT and get this out, but it's nowhere near as good, which is a shame as the book series is excellent. I honestly don't see how it can be fixed at this point either, but you really need to go back to the beginning to fix some of the early foundation in order to really make the rest of the story shine. It's probably only a time filler for most people.