Even with all the changes the show was great up until season 4, after it Dan and David had no more material to work of because Martin hadn't finished the books and he probably never will, they had only Martin's plans for the storylines and they ended up butchering just about every single story line they could, if you read the books you could already see how they wrote stuff more black and white than the source material, characters like Stannis and Tyrion for example are extremely complicated and layered in the books but on the show they just made one evil and one the good guy, they also removed important characters like Tysha, Tyrion's lover in the books and replaced her with Shae who is an extremely poor replacement, the seeds for the writting being bad without following the source material was already there, and for book readers it became very evident what was going to happen after season 5, the show was different, plotlines from the books were altered and rushed along to a mediocre conclusion that should not even be considered canon given where characters in the books are left off, for example Stannis is outside the Winterfell walls WITHOUT Shireen, so the chances he burns his daughter to melt some snow are extremely unlikely, it's more likely, Melisandre will sacrifice her at Castle Black, where she and her mother are both at to revive Jon whom was just murdered and is believed to be Azor Ahai by the witch, that's just one of the many examples of a butchered storyline, I won't even go into detail about Dorne, Barristan, Jorah, Euron Greyjoy and many others who were character assassinated and merged with several book characters that were cut because they wanted the show to only have 7 seasons.
Season 6 was more enjoyable that 5 for me, but still very poor in terms of writting, season 7 was probably when I truly realized this whole show was heading torwards a very rushed and senseless conclusion, the whole plot of getting a zombie from beyond the wall was so contrived it still makes my head hurt and season 8 was absolute trash, I was hopeful they would at least manage to give us some satisfying moments but no, they subverted our expectations because "oh nobody will see this coming!" it's the cheapest way to surprise your audience and on top of atrocious decisions like having Arya kill the Night King you make us suffer through absolute GARBAGE scripts that should've never made it to TV let alone win a ******* emmy, the whole Dany conclusion was poor and tasteless because Dan and Dave painted her and Jon as the two heroes of the story for years, not realizing they were removing all the nuance and faults of their characters in the books, essentialy dumbing them down for an audience who had been equally dumbed down by the point the last season air, and even though many cheered for moments like Arya killing the NK, Brienne ******* Jaime, the hound and mountain fighting, it became clear those were nothing but cheap thrills in a terrible script, not even the audience they had continuously duped into thinking they were watching grade A television ate the turd they put out in the end.
The real tragedy of GoT is that not only did the show fail but the books will suffer the same fate, since George R.R Martin will die before he even releases the Winds of Winter let alone finish the ******* story, so we will forever be stuck with a mediocre, rushed and ultimately forgettable story that was not only butchered by it's adaptors but forgotten by it's own author as well, GoT was truly great at one point, but for all his criticism of Tolkien, George will never even reach his level, not matter how many nihilistic, edgy and disgusting material he writes, in the end TLoTR is timeless whereas GoT is ephemeral.
I will not be watching House of the Dragon, even if there's little chance to ruin the plot since all the material is already there I cannot support this franchise any longer, the network didn't care, the TV writers didn't care, George doesn't care, this show is just another way for those people to make money off the story that Martin has lost his interest in and will never finish, and I will not support that because the truth is I have lost interest as well, I once loved the franchise, I really did and now I just feel emptiness about the whole thing.