The Scrappy / World of Warcraft

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• Of all the leaders in Vanilla, Fandral Staghelm received the most hate. While Blizzard wanted us to sympathize with him as a tragic character that could not move past his son's death, many players came out viewing him as a xenophobic jerkass due to his arrogant nature, looking down on non-night elves, replacing then-fan favorite Malfurion Stormrage as the Night Elven archdruid, and effectively causing the whole Ahn'Qiraj storyline simply because he couldn't move past his son's death. The player backlash against him was probably why he was portrayed as a villain in Stormrage, where he was revealed to have been working with Xavius to keep Malfurion imprisoned in the Emerald Dream, and Cataclysm, where he had gone over to Ragnaros' side in the aftermath of the Shattering.
• Initially Garrosh Hellscream was hated by players during Wrath of the Lich King for being a reckless warmonger sabotaging Thrall's attempts to make peace with The Alliance; while Blizzard had plans for Garrosh to mature into a wiser leader during Cataclysm, many players were not won over by any efforts Blizzard made to develop the character. Not helping matters is Garrosh's role in Cairne's death. As a result, Blizzard scrapped his planned Character Development, retconned his more positive acts, and set him up as an antagonist for Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor. Over time, however the hate for Garrosh has died down due to the growing perception that Garrosh's actions, at least in Cataclysm, were a justifiable reaction to the moves of the Night Elves against the Horde, along with the perception that he tried his best to overcome the responsibilities Thrall left him when he was appointed as Warchief, and growing fatigue at Blizzard doing another Faction War Storyline painting the Horde as villainous and prone to rebellion in Battle For Azeroth. As a result, the character has been much more warmly received in hindsight, with the meme "Garrosh did nothing wrong" being popular among the fanbase.
• Med'an, son of Medivh and Garona and the new Guardian of Tirisfal, is widely disliked for being a one-of-a-kind Heinz Hybrid with the power level of a Guardian and All Your Powers Combined, and some consider his parents a Crack Pairing. His conspicuous absence in the main game is generally considered to be the result of his negative reception in the comics. Even Blizzard has tried to wipe his existence from the lore, with them confirming he was not a Guardian and later Chronicles Volume 3 all but saying that he wasn't canon at all — the index lists him as being on the non-existent page 404.
• Aggralan, an allegedly exemplary Mag'har shamanka who was apparently introduced entirely for the purpose of sinking the Thrall/Jaina 'ship (not to mention getting pregnant by the last patch of the expansion) isn't particularly well-liked, either. Apart from her role in Thrall's story, the criticisms tend to actually be about her abrasive personality and lack of characterization rather than the ship-sink.
• Like Thrall, Malfurion Stormrage used to be a popular character. However, his return in Cataclysm turned many players against him. He's wrestled the night elf leadership away from his wife Tyrande, turning her into little more than arm candy in the process. Despite this, he doesn't actually seem to care about the night elves, as he ignores the Horde's blatant incursions into their land and razing of Ashenvale Forest. While this is allegedly because he needs the Horde's help in Mount Hyjal, it makes him seem uncaring and hypocritical to Alliance players. When Tyrande took more aggressive measures, he didn't act to either support her or calm her down. Malfurion has pretty much become the defining example of how neutrality can ruin a character in the fanbase.
• Harrison Jones gets a lot of hate for turning entire zones or storylines that could be used to explore more interesting lore topics into just one long pop culture reference. The worst example of this would be Uldum, where his presence turned the entire plot of the last leg of the Uldum story arc into one big Indiana Jones homage that many players did not enjoy, believing instead that Blizzard should have explored the lore regarding the Tol'vir and Al'Akir further in those quests.
• Ji Firepaw is disliked for being out of place on the Horde. He joins the Horde in one of its most Flanderized states, immediately regrets the decision, effectively being another thing in Mists of Pandaria to go out of its way to shame the Horde player, forging zero connections to anyone in the Horde, and then being a Damsel Scrappy who is saved by the Alliance. Ji is often compared unfavorably to prior Pandaren, Chen Stormstout who did have a reason to like the Horde, friendships within it and enmity with members of the Alliance.
• As mentioned in Replacement Scrappy, the Baine of Tides of War and Battle for Azeroth is considered to be an unsympathetic traitor who is only ever a liability to the Horde, especially the tauren. Basically, the writers constantly used Baine as a mouthpiece to defend every bit of Alliance aggression at the tauren's expense so much that it eventually killed all of the tauren leader's credibility.
• The new version of Nathanos Blightcaller, who's been revamped into a rude, smug dark ranger in charge of Horde operations on Stormheim in Legion and on Zandalar and Kul Tiras in Battle for Azeroth. Horde players hate him for having to endure his snark throughout questing and raiding, while Alliance players hate him for his inexplicable ability to survive and even fight on roughly even terms (and for his snark too), against Alliance characters far stronger than himself, such as Tyrande and Malfurion at the same time (when either of them should be able to stomp him, during a patch that was advertised as being "the night elves' vengeance for Teldrassil"). Many players cheered when, in the pre-Shadowlands event, he is killed by the players and Tyrande at the Marris farm.
• Zovaal, better known as The Jailer, the Big Bad of Shadowlands is considered by many to be one of the worst villains in the entire franchise, if not the worst, due to a lot of factors. For one, Shadowlands strongly hints that he was behind every single major tragedy in the franchise despite little to no buildup beforehand. Secondly, he is seen as an extremely one-note "take-over-the-cosmos" character whose characterization as a cosmic mastermind came at odds with his flat in-game portrayal; some players actually supported a Man Behind the Man storyline, but they believe Denathrius would have made a better antagonist in that regard due to his more layered characterization and links with the Dreadlords. Blizzard's attempts to expand on the character's motivations in 9.2 did nothing to make the character more palatable for the playerbase. This is because all Blizzard did was establish the character as fighting to prevent a greater catastrophe from befalling the cosmos...despite not elaborating what that coming threat was or making the revelation mesh properly with the characterization of Zovaal beforehand.

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