David Eddings > Robert Jordan ?

I just read Eye Of The World / Wheel Of Time I and I don't get the hype that this fantasy series receives at all. A lot of it seems to be heavily borrowed from Eddings' Belgariad saga (which is my favorite fantasy series). Yes, Jordan has a much more sophisticated writing style and I guess a bigger vocabulary. But the pace, his plotting, his story-writing ability kinda sucked in the first book. Does it get better with the next couple of books?

At least Jordan only has the one series. What's the crack about Eddings? He's written the same series four different times?