I have to believe that the HoD IMDb rating is being pumped up by a rabid fanbase, even though the show is in fact, a pile of garbage.

RoP IMO is quite a lot better. I enjoyed the first episode.

Hm. The fanbase from GoT was rabid, I'll give you, but rabid with negativity - they hated the ending, and a lot of them soured on the entire show after it was over. LoTR has an equally rapid fanbase, I'd say, but they were much more uniformly positive towards the source material.

Then again, maybe that's why - the GoT fans are pleasantly surprised that HotD isn't a disaster, whereas the LoTR fans are upset that it's not as good as they'd expect.

It sure seemed like a disaster 30 minutes in. I guess I’ll continue with it and see..

House of Dragons has an anti-fan base.

The most popular subreddit for game of thrones content is based around hating the source material: https://old.reddit.com/r/freefolk/

Your opinion is an extremely rare one, if you weren't already aware. The consensus is the opposite.