You do know why GoT first seasons were good, right? My guess is it has something to do with a certain author of said books.before Game of Thrones David Benioff and Dan Weiss hadn't really done a lot but they nailed it (the first 4 seasons)...plus Amazon is spending $400 million on the first season alone...that number includes the sum paid to the Tolkien estate but it's still the most expensive TV show ever made...no way will it tank...it might disappoint after all the years of buildup and hype but it won't fail...I think this is going to be Amazon's version of Game of Thrones in terms of buzzy watercooler series
After they couldn't follow George R.R Martin's books the tv series started plummeting real hard.
I think you are misunderstanding what people actually want. They don't want another GoT.. they want a tv series that's faithful to the source material and similar in style to the first 3 LOTR movies.