for me, i like it that they were following the books. now that there is no more book to follow, you get the story coming from new people and story telling styles may change and what not
which is why twd show was not as good as the comics. even though novels are almost always better than their show/movie counterpart, they become more distant if they don't follow their paper back source material
but even though twd didn't follow the comics as closely, the stories paralleled each other similarly. not sure how GoT is gonna do without using a book as a guideline at least. i'm just assuming that if/when they start writing and filming next season, GRRM is there as a consultant