Rereading them for the first time in close to a decade has me thinking of this recently. My best friend introduced me to WoT early in high school, saying, "So you like Eragon? It's like that meets Lord of the Rings, but much bigger and in depth."
Eye of the World intrigued me and the Great Hunt blew my mind at the time. They were one of the first, if not the very first, non-YA books I read and I had never experienced a story with so many viewpoints, characters, politics, etc. And it introduced me to Sanderson! Which of course has hugely shaped my taste in fantasy.