EDIT: Nope, just not doing this.
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I can see reasons to object, I want to learn how you came to that conclusion. EDIT: 
I think Velenâs reaction to Xeâra being blown to smithereens kindâve summed it up for me.
He was like âOkay, Illian that was rude, but also XeâraâŠgirl.â and quietly swept up Xeâraâs corpse (?) for safekeeping.
Conclusion: What other people said. Xeâra is a being of Light, therefore cannot perceive her own actions with the same judgement compass as mortals. She just is.
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Beings that deal only in absolutes tend to be evil.
Xeâra in no way chastised Illidan for his crimes and sought to lecture me for putting him down as the self proclaimed tyrant ruler of a dying world. It was her way or the high way and I canât say I vibe with that, not after jailing Alleria and attempting to forcefully convert Illidan.
I think that has less to do with Illidanâs ethics and more to do with just him as a character.
Illidan has a lot of content exploring his character, including a very-well received novel written just for him as Legion came out.
Heâs an iconic WoW character, both in terms of WC3 and just in WoW
âYOU ARE NOT PREPARED!!!â and all that.
Heâs also a tall ripped emo bad boy.
Xeâra existed for⊠not even a whole xpac.
She was immediately disliked in her introductory quests due to how she interacted with the player.
And I canât, personally, find a giant floating amalgam of crystal attractive.
They both did terrible things. And many people who enjoy Illidan as a character will admit heâs a terrible person.
But he has a depth of character that allows people to enjoy his character despite his moral failings, whereas Xeâra didnât.
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I mean, I love Palpatine more than, say⊠The Jailer, but I am not gonna pretend Palpatine is good. They both are jerks. But Palpatine is fun to listen to and watch. His laugh is so infectious.
Palpatine looks like he is having fun being bad. The Jailer had his nipples out leading the way. Loving a Character more than another does not mean the Character has to be good. They can both be jerks.
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Vader is another character whoâs popularity transcends SW, almost everyone knows who he is and that iconic breathing of his. People love him, but are self aware enough to admit he was a pretty awful person.
I never understood why liking a Bad Guy suddenly means everyone ignores what said character did. We often know theyâre terrible, but like with Palpatine, theyâre soo well portrayed that they become iconic in their own right
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Speaking of double standards, arenât you performing that by upvoting Kaioonâs comment about how Illidan enslaved plenty of people, and that Xeâra was only doing to him what he did to others while insisting that she actually wasnât doing that at all?
Xeâra was a good character. There is no way to look at your history and think otherwise.
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Did you miss the part where he repeatedly says NO! and she ignores it?
We aleady killed him once for that and then worked to bring him back so not relevant to the question at hand. Xâera claimed that He was the âchosen oneâ so she had no problem with him being alive again.
Guilty as charged.
Morality is subjective so thatâs why I donât think society has any business legislating it.
Ethics and standards for civilized behavior on the other hand are things that can be rationally discussed in terms of social contract so we CAN legislate on things such as robbery, medical ethics, murder, insider trading, and involountary servitude.
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I feel like when you hit to the forces like the Naaru, Blizz was taking a bit of a page from Babylon 5 and the giants in the playground idea, where they have concerns of their own that donât necessarily line up with the mortal races of Azeroth. Itâs not quite a âwe are to them as ants are to usâ level, but that they see the mortals as useful lesser beings, that they can train to their ends.
For Xeâra, I kinda feel like thereâs a good heart of truth to the joke about her illidan fanfiction. She has discovered someone who may fit a prophesy that she feels is very important so she will twist the facts as needed to fit him into that role. I feel like those scenarios were crafted to highlight the stretches she was making to align who he is with what she wanted him to be. He wasnât something to her because of who he was, he was something to her to be molded into the tools she thought would achieve her goals, and it didnât matter to her if he wanted to be that.
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Any who defy lord illidan is evil! (Perhaps just lady sylvanas is a greater good) so Xeâra is totally and wholly evil, good that that little wind chime got obliterated! The universe shall never know the naaru true horror!
By lord illidanâs grace you are alive death knight, be grateful! Enjoy the gifts he gave to you! Kneel and pray for his image! Bow and serve under his radiance and glory!
May the dark lady watch over you!
So Xeâra wouldâve had more fans, or less haters, if sheâd looked like this?
https://images2.alphacoders.com/842/thumb-1920-84292.jpg
Some of these answers are excellent character studies.
No, because I upvoted Kaioonâs comment for different reasons; because he called out the double standards Iâve also seen from fans (eg; they whitewash Illidan but didnât like Xeâra whitewashing Illidan) and because I agree with his view of Illidan.
And yet a lot of the people who Xeâra for trying to change Illidan do the same thing they say Xeâra did; they glamorize Illidan, make fanfics about him and donât see Illidan as he is, they see what they want to see in him, regardless of whether heâd want that.
So itâs okay when they do it, but if a character in-universe does it?
I mean, that is fandom, youâre always gonna find at least someone liking any character out there no matter what they do. Even if itâs just because they like the actor playing/voicing them, or whatever. I mean in some regards, this could also be a bit of a reflection of that aspect of fan culture and how they act with favorites.
Iâm just saying, the way the quests are presented, that to me, the intention of the writing did not come off in a way to say that Illidan was what Xeâra saw him as, but that the presentation makes it clear how wide a gulf there was between Xeâraâs commentary on the scenes played through and what actually happened. You can read that as her being blinded to his actions by his status as the chosen one, or possibly her trying to massage his image to fit the chosen one she needed to be to fit her plans.
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the pitfall you have fallen into is your assumption that because illidans has fans they must morally endorce everything he says and does, when the truth is he was just a fun villain. More popular then xeâra purely because of his more human physique and sheer amount of screentime, iâm sure if xeâra had looked like a human and had 10+years of screentime and pov books, sheâd be popular as well
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I didnât click on your link but I will definitely tell you, if Xera looked and talked like Jessica Rabbit, she would probably be more popular than Illidan.
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Xeâra is no more good or evil than a natural disaster, but out of all the cosmological forces weâve seen so far, the Light is only one to actively uplift and benefit the human kingdoms without some sort of blow back. Hopefully they keep it that way but knowing Blizzard theyâll write in some terrible shades of grey or from a certain point of view mess.
Probably.
Though thereâs more to it than a hot bod and abs that donât quit.
A characterâs popularity doesnât often correlate to their ethics or morality.
It can, but there are also a lot of factors that play in to it.
A neat example is one I like to call âCotton vs. Peggy: The Worst Hillâ
Cotton Hill and Peggy Hill are characters from the animated show, King of the Hill.
Great show. Go watch it. Seen it before? Watch it again.
Anyway, let me give a brief summary of the characters.
Peggy is the wife of the main character. She is narcissistic, has an inflated ego, is a know-it-all who is often wrong, and acts selfish throughout the series. (She wasnât always that bad, but flanderization gonna flander)
However, many moments in the show take time to show her as a good mother and spouse. She genuinely loves and supports her family.
Cotton Hill is an extremely racist and sexist old man. He is Hankâs father, and takes every moment he can to demean his son. He is not proud of Hank. So much so that when he has another kid with his new foreign young wife (he is 70) he names the child âGood Hankâ.
He is also extremely rude to Peggy, as well as his ex-wife (Hankâs mother). This is because Cotton does not respect women.
Now, he does have a few scant moments that show him in a good light. But they are few and far between. All too often, Cottonâs âgood momentsâ are just him not being racist or sexist.
Now, in the fandom, who might you think is the more disliked character?
More often than not, itâs Peggy.
People donât like Peggy. People like Cotton. Not because he is a good person, but because heâs an entertaining character. Heâs funny.
Peggy doesnât enjoy that kind of writing. Whereas Cottonâs flaws come off as jokes, Peggyâs just come off as flaws. And thatâs just a surface examination.
Now, Iâm not trying to equate either of these characters with Illidan or Xeâra.
Just attempting to illustrate a point. That when it comes to popularity, there are so many factors that play in to it.
Yes, there might be some people who are pro-Illidan and anti-Xeâra for hypocritical reasons. Iâm sure they exist. Every Bad Boy and Bad Girl has a few of those fans floating around.
But theyâre usually a minority.
Both Xeâra and Illidan did bad things. Illidan did a lot of bad things.
But he has more facets that endear him to the audience than Xeâra had.
Even before she tried to Lightforge Illidan, Xeâra was a very disliked character. So when she did the bad thing, it was just more logs for the pyre.
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The thing with BatBoy is that thereâs a lot more depth to the character which isnât surprising considering that he dates from the RTS. And has a long complicated relationship with his brother and Tyrande.
Heâs done things for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so good, and he has both good and not so good qualities. Heâs a caring figure, but heâs also arrogant and quite unhesitant to use up the people he doesnât have a personal connection to.
In short heâs a far more interesting character to love AND hate. Xâera comes across as little more than a rigidly programmed construct and she simply isnât around that long in comparison. So she simply doesnât have the depth or the foundation for a strong fan base either way.
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I see. Itâs still ironic/hypocritical when WoW fans whitewash Illidan then give Xeâra 
if she does so in-universe.
The link was to a picture of the angel Akroma from Magic the Gathering, my social credit score here is too low to post images and videos.
Your whole comment was awesome, just to ask, why was Xeâra so disliked BEFORE that Lightforging moment? And how can Cotton be entertaining by doing terrible things? Cottonâs flaws exist in real-life too.