Your right, it wasnt designed for Tolkien fans. That means the majority of ppl who like it, aren't Tolkien fans. Tolkien was a great writer, pretty hard to find anyone who has read LoTR and said "I hated it, the guy who wrote it is a horrible author".

Which means the majority of the gen pop has either; no clue who Tolkien is, or knows who he is but aren't much of readers and never read any of his books.

I can almost guarantee you though that 90% of those ppl who never read a Tolkien book would say they saw the LoTR trilogy, and loved them. Possibly the Hobbit trilogy as well.

So most the gen pop didn't give a second though to whos world it was. They were comparing it to the movies they saw previously; LoTR trilogy, 90% minimum would say they loved it. Possibly Hobbit trilogy (haven't seen it myself but have heard alot more good than bad).

They then would base their likes/dislikes on how they were compared to the movies. How well things matched up with what they already know about this world; characters, the world itself, timelines, story line continuity.

I, being one of those ppl. Thought all those things were fairly close, and it reminded me alot of the movies. I assume most the fans would feel the same way.

So it's not likely that the majority of fans think this world is Tolkiens Schlock. That's because majority of fans don't know who Tolkien is, or have never read one of his books.

Plus, none of that really matters anyways. Fans of any show obviously don't think the show is schlock. If they did, then they wouldn't be a fan of it.