It should be remembered that at the time when LOTR was first published nothing of its like, outside of plays and fairy tales, had ever been seen before. We have mister Tolkien to thank for the modern images of things like Elves, dwarves and Orcs and without him GW games and many other roleplay and tabletop games would not exist.
The LOTR books are a product of their times as well and as such they can tend to be seen as quiant and uncomplicated. However as world building goes Niddle Earth still stands as one of the best and that is as a testament to the skills of Tolkien in wanting to populate a world for which he had created languages and cultures for.
The books are not well written but the story is fantastic and each of us have been touched by it in some way even if it is not by having read the books directly and i'm sure George R. R. Martin and Frank herbert would be the first to acknowledge the influnce the LOTR books had on their own creations.
That's my thoughts anyway