I've loved reading this thread! I honestly haven't given The Eye a whole lot of thought since it's appearance in the first book. However some of the theories make sense based on inference just from what the object is named.

The Eye of the World. The world of the prophecies is madness and chaos, turmoil and strife. We have titles that reflect this "The Gathering Storm" The location of the Eye and the name of it, fits with the imagery. The Eye of a storm is a place of calm amidst turmoil. The Green Man's sanctuary was that, but more so, if the power of the Eye has been protecting Rand from madness then that also holds.

Also, and very obviously an eye see's. For some reason I remember Ishmael saying that he'll 'blind the eye of the world'. And then one of the names for the dark one is 'Sight blinder'...Again it might just be some literary resonnance but...I also don't think that image strands like that emerge if there is not meant to be any correlation.

As we saw when Rand and Nynaeve cleaned saidin, channellers do not have to die to purify the power, yet the Aes Sedai who created this pool of pure saidin sacrificed themselves. Such a feat is nothing short of heroic, interstingly the Eye covered The Horn, and the banner, the Horn calls back dead heroes to help protect the world...The Eye protects Rand from madness and maybe bumps up his Ta'Veren luck...but it's almost like some gaurdian angel stuff with this force watching out for him.

It also fits that the eye slowed the weakening of the seals. It aso kinda ties the Amyrlin, and therefore the White Tower, who's title of duties includes being the "Watcher of the Seals" to the Dragon if he does infact command The Eye of the World. This is a tennuous tie as its really just through literary device but it flows for me. It reinforces what needs to happen, the Aes Sedai need to follow The Dragon's directive, the seals need to be destroyed and the bore needs to be resealed with both saidin & saidar. The Amyrlin has to follow the dragon...he's the one with the eyes.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Also, we are talking about $17.00 product. I understand it's more the principle, and $17.00 is still $17.00 dollars, which is a lot when you only have a little. But honestly, you only get refunds or compensations when you ask for them, and generally you have to prove that you paid what you paid and when you paid it. Like with a reciept, but I would encourage all of the people that had paid for the New Spring series to either ask Dabel Bros. for a refund or ask Tor for a discount.

Perhaps try writing a polite request, explain that you paid already and never received the full product, and see if they would reward your long patience with a free or discounted copy.

It never hurts to ask. And might yield a satisfactory result and a letter to them would be more successful in attaining your desires outcome than anything you'll post here.

They are interpretations of the characters, no one said anyone has to buy them, if they don't appeal to a person's artistic pallet, there's lots of pens, paper, and paints out there, and all the freedom in the world to try and do better.