So I take it people here hates this final season so far?

I love it in a car crash sort of way. There's no more hope nor expectations to distract from the beauty that is this pointless descent into sheer nonsense.

This could have been one of the greatest shows of all time, but instead the writers decided they'd much rather metaphorically eat their own shit on camera. And it is glorious.

I predict I will get around to seeing the finale sometime in 2024.

Prediction: Peace at last. All the bandwagoners will be forced to find something else to be part of.

The writing is just poor. I don't mind the plot or character actions, I just don't think it's been written well or paced right. Honestly I've never loved the show as much as some people do, but when it was based on the books it did have very good dialog and character development for the most part. Now it suffers from a lack of novels and a rush to cover lots of plot in a short time.

Some people blame the rush to finish in 73 episodes or whatever it is, but I think it's more about trying to do too much in those last 13.

Anyway, my prediction is the obvious one really: John realizes he has to take his place as king and kill Dany, Tyrion helps by finally betraying her, Sam becomes hand of the king. I think that's been so obviously set up at this point it'll either happen just like that or there will be a SUBVERTED EXPECTATIONS YO!" which is very popular now-a-days, and maybe that'll be the setup but Dany will win in a shocking turn or something like that. Honestly the way TV shows work now-a-days the shocking Dany win would be more expected, and the obvious way it's supposed to play out would be more surprising.

I'm glad they killed off the Dead/White Walkers, GoT's "thing" was that the real monsters were humans, I would of been unhappy if they turned into generic fantasy with a dark lord leading hordes of monsters.

Then again, I would prefer if GoT had no fantasy elements at all, no dragons, no Priestess with fire powers, just people.

I lost interest after season 5. When I heard about the silly garbage that went down in season 6, it nailed it for me. Cersei blowing everyone up in the Sept was a big one, as was the character/writing betrayal of many important people like Jaime and Stannis. Everyone half-interesting are already dead, and the writers are clearly just trying to tie up loose ends by killing off anyone tied to the main plot/characters.

Clearly Martin and the show writers have had Dany or Jon as the end-goal for the Throne. They've essentially been given God-Mode and cheated death in so many ways that true human drama has been stripped away and given standard Hollywood CGI silliness. The quality of the early books to me was the back-stabbing, back-room scheming and betrayals. They were a slow burn. The show in the later seasons is like just another Hollywood action franchise... big, loud and devoid of drama or purpose.

The great thing about GOT was that it was basically a medieval version of The Godfather, a bunch of flawed people climbing over each other for the rewards of power and riches. But in order to have a fitting action packed climax, the writers have abandoned those qualities and turned the whole thing into a big cartoon. Nothing makes sense any more, and the few consequences or drama that could be squeezed from the narrative is so easily predicted that you can set your watch to it.

So the TLDR is screw that show, it's pointless, jammed full of goofy political and social messages that get lost completely given the show's framework, and all the interesting characters are dead. There will never be any more Red Weddings, or Tywin murders, or battles of wits between Little Finger and Varys. All the fun from the show is gone, and I'm just glad I never wasted my money decorating my room in GOT gear like so many fanboys did. GOT is DOA.

My not-so-serious prediction:
Dany goes all Mad Queen...
Kills Tyrian for treason for releasing Jamie...
Kills Sansa for declaring the North its own state...
Jon Snow feels compelled to kill her...
Fights through and kills Grey Worm...
And just as he strikes Dany through...
Coming from out of nowhere...
Is Ghost...
Who has escaped from Tormund...
Travelled 100's of miles...
Jumps on and mauls Jon Snow to death for failing to pet him...

And the winner of the Game of Thrones...
Is the Starbuck's Cup, left sitting on the empty throne.

The set pieces have been nice for the most part and there were still a few good characters, but as has already been said, the writing is just really bad. There's a lot of stuff that seems to happen like someone is flipping a switch, there's no explanation, no character motivation provided, just sloppy writing. They set up a problem only to solve it by deus ex machina over and over again.... it's been a problem for the last two seasons. It's still relatively entertaining though.
You know you don't have to subject yourself to things you don't like. Also, your preferences in tv shows don't make you better or worse than anyone else.
Not so serious predictions were kind of the point.... I tried to set the tone with my prediction. And most people seem to have gotten that.

You can't deny that the way GoT was/is plastered everywhere over the news, media etc was becoming extremely irritating in recent years, even as a fan of the show it got on my nerves.

I haven't really noticed. The only site I've gone to that had a lot about it was Polygon, and I just don't click on the articles. Just like I don't click on their articles about youtube personalities.... it's easy enough to opt out of the circus.

Have you ever played Shadow Warrior (the shiny new rerelease from like 2016)?

There's this excellent exchange that I STILL remember to this day, made even better by the voice acting of the two characters. The demon Hoji:

"I was into the sword before it was cool"

Wang:

"You should move to Portland and start a band."

But I only found GoT about 2 years ago.

I have played it. And that was a great line. It made me laugh. There was some great dialogue in general in that game.

Tyrion kills Dany. Sansa becomes ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.