I have always liked Fandral Staghelm.
To me, Fandral was the only character who treated your new character the way she should have been treated. All other friendly NPCs fawn over your character, giving them praise that they haven't really earned yet. Fandral, on the other hand, was all "Why is this level 10 noob bothering me? Here, go take a message to Darkshore."
The thing is that Fandral (as originally presented) wasn't a nice character, but he was a good character. That distinction is not often made. Far too often, nice is synonymous with good. Bad characters are mean to you, good characters are nice to you.
I also like that he wasn't a passive character, like Tyrande. He tried to fix things, even if the solutions were not perfect. He didn't get help from the Dragon Aspects (the majority of which had disappeared or gone rogue), but he kept on going anyways. He was arrogant and ambitious, but seemed genuinely concerned with his people.
In the Ahn'Quiraj patch, I really enjoyed the way Blizzard fleshed out Fandral's back story. The loss of his son at the moment of victory made him sympathetic, and understandable.
But with Cataclysm, Blizzard has made Fandral into a villain. Apparently the simplistic case is correct. If an NPC is mean, he is a bad guy.
Even the Morrowgrain storyline backs this up. Some no-name druid tells you Fandral is using Morrowgrain for evil purposes, and instead of telling you to stop collecting Morrowgrain, tells you to bring it to him instead. Yeah, that's not the least bit suspicious. But since Quentis Jonespyre was nice to you, and Fandral was mean, clearly Quentis is the good guy.
And all the challenges Fandral struggled with? Mary-Sue-Furion comes back, and then everyone else (like the Dragon Aspects) fall over themselves to help him resolve all the problems easily.
Fandral was intriguing friendly NPC. In my view, having him "go evil" was a waste of a unique character, and merely reinforces a cartoonish "mean equals bad" way of looking at the world.