It's not unusual for a character in World of Warcraft to become defined by a single action or moment by the fanbase regardless of what's actually reflected in canon.
- Many, many fans consider Garrosh's killing of Cairne to be his Moral Event Horizon, even though the entire affair was full of mitigating factors and was treated as a grey and ambiguous conflict for both parties. Ultimately, Cairne dueled Garrosh due to a misunderstanding as Garrosh had been framed by a Twilight's Hammer False Flag Operation and because Garrosh's weapon was poisoned, a fact which Garrosh was entirely unaware of. He even lamented the death of Cairne in the novel where this happened, noting Cairne was a great warrior of the horde. The fan reaction eventually resulted in the writers later treating it like Garrosh had killed Cairne on purpose.
- Jaina's brief tenure as a tunnel-visioned warmonger in Tides of War caused many players to claim that "Jaina Proudmoore died at Theramore", even though this was by and large addressed in the very same book, and even at her worst she's never approached that mindset again. However, a vocal element of the playerbase has taken that moment and Flanderized it into Jaina being an insane perpetrator of genocide with the blood of half the world on her hands. It doesn't help that Blizzard made the tunnel-vision stick as she went back on her development with the Purge of Dalaran, is still very obstructive to the Horde in Warlords of Draenor, and left Dalaran in Legion bitterly because Khadgar opened it to the Horde again, but in all of these cases, she never actually hurts anyone herself and usually just leaves in a huff without a fight.
- That wasn't Jaina's first brush with this concept, either. In Warcraft III, Jaina was an Action Girl who, at the end of the story, ultimately let the Horde kill her father in order to preserve the peace that they had finally made after defeating the Burning Legion. This, however, slowly got inflated until the fandom begun to consider her an Actual Pacifist, despite her not actually hating fighting, just seeing that the Alliance had no reason to fight Thrall's new Horde. Along with this, her lack of attention in the plot of early World of Warcraft aside from appearing a couple of times in emotionally charged moments to cry, had led players to assume she had undergone Chickification. These two things ultimately led to the fanbase seeing Jaina as a weak and pathetic character who desperately needed to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. Unfortunately, while that prevailing interpretation of her was mostly overturned, it was only by the aforementioned previous bullet point that arguably made things worse. This version had gotten so bad, however, that it did survive in pockets in ways that leads to the worse interpretations of the tunnel-visioned Jaina. For instance, Jaina allowing troops to move through her city was seen as a betrayal of her character that deserved the Horde's ire, even though Jaina was never actually a pacifist. While Jaina would certainly have preferred to keep things with Garrosh the way they had been with Thrall, Garrosh was a proud warmonger and Jaina was always willing to fight people like him who you could not have peace with.
- Illidan recovered from this. He served as the poster villain of the Burning Crusade expansion, which led to his more morally ambiguous character be replaced with a Card-Carrying Villain who was put down unceremoniously. Being the primary exposure to him for many players, this differing characterization defined him even retroactively for much of the playerbase. When Illidan returned in Legion, many immediately assumed he was on the villain's side, and would wonder why they were helping him when they realized they had to do so. In the end, however, the commitment to reestablishing his character seemed to slowly explain to people who he originally was. Unfortunately, his old allies Kael'thas and Lady Vashj seem cursed to forever be remembered with their Card-Carrying Villain personalities that appeared from nowhere in the Burning Crusade.
- Apparently, Ner'zhul has never lived down the portion of his existence he spent as the Lich King, given that his shtick in Warlords of Draenor is shadow-based necromancy and his Shadowmoon Clan are a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the Cult of The Damned/the Scourge. It was to the point that many fans were upset at how easily he went down because of how big of a deal it was to take down the Lich King, despite him mostly still being a normal orc during Warlords of Draenor.
- A lot of fans still viewed Varian with his initial, extremely hot-headed personality all the way to the end. To be fair, much of his Character Development happened outside of the game, so many people legitimately weren't aware of it.
- Memes about Malfurion have really damaged his reputation for a lot of the fanbase, and his Story-Breaker Power leading him to be constantly written into Badass in Distress moments haven't given him much exposure to change their minds. In Legion, Xavius' taunting illusions of Malfurion have been by mistaken for the actual Malfurion by many fans, further hurting his reputation as weak and whiny. In reality, he's supposed to be an immensely powerful and wise old leader who was willing to give up his immortality for the greater good, and he is Happily Married to Tyrande in a fashion that is quite rare in fiction.
- Thrall seems fated to never live down his "Green Jesus" meme. To explain, Thrall grew up as a gladiator before escaping, freeing his people, helping to redeem them, and rediscovering their old ways. Then in the lead-up to the Cataclysm expansion, him having the skills of a warrior but the religion of a shaman is suddenly transformed into him being the most powerful shaman on Azeroth and a bit of a chosen one who leaves his role as Warchief to single-handedly hold the world together. On top of that, he had previously discovered that his birth name was Go'el, an oft-presumed shout out to Kal-El, and started insisting everyone use it now (despite the very intentional and meaningful reason he kept the name Thrall to begin with). Even though Thrall was toned back down in the following expansion and had small roles in the two after that, the fandom has found it hard to forget. He was an extremely popular and well-loved character up until Cataclysm, which might be why the increased focus happened to begin with, but it ultimately backfired. It doesn't help that once escalated to that point, his retirement in future expansions simply makes him look negligent since there's no official reason he shouldn't be able to continue saving the world with ease.
- It seems the Prime Naaru Xe'ra, due to being a Minor Major Character and a Hero of Another Story, will almost exclusively be remembered as a fanatic and the Naaru that tried to force the power of the Light onto Illidan and got killed by him for it. The short story "A Thousand Years of War" only added fuel to the fire for some fans, as everything else Xe'ra did in that story (including saving Turalyon's and Alleria's lives and helping uncover the source of the Legion's Resurrective Immortality) is often forgotten in favour of her judgment on Alleria for using the power of the Void. It doesn't help that Xe'ra threatened to kill Alleria if she didn't give it up — with the fact she relented and chose a more merciful route at the behest of Turalyon and Lothraxion often being ignored.
- Some people seem to think Sylvanas was evil (or, at least, not a good person) even before she became undead, mainly due to an infamous line in Edge Of Night where she has flashback to the Battle of Silvermoon and, when told a group of rangers are likely not going to make it, claims they are "arrows in [her] quiver". which sounds pretty bad, but, considering other books depict her grieving over her dead comrades during the battle, as well as the Battle For Azeroth trailer showing her getting in front of a woman and child to buy them time to escape, it was possibly more of a The Needs of the Many type thing (i.e it's a hard choice to make, but since she's the leader she has to make it anyway.) Even the story itself describes her tone as "measured" when saying this, which could be interpreted as her attempting to conceal her emotions on the matter, as obviously a General doesn't want her troops to see that. The Sylvanas novel confirms that she was a good and kind-hearted person in life for the most part, so the scene in Edge Of Night is likely meant to be a case of O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
