In 101 Dalmatians (1996 live-action version), Roger is working on his game and presents it to a company that has a young boy play-testing the game. After playing the game and determining that the game could use some work, Roger asks, "What if there were a better villain? You know, someone you could really hate?" The boy replies, "It's not hatred that's important. It's a desire to annihilate."
That got me to thinking about what really goes into a good villain for a D&D campaign. While I agree that hatred alone cannot be the cornerstone of a good villain, is saying that a desire to annihilate is all that a good villain needs? A good villain tends to have some layers around them that make them more than just a flat character, because it is hard to hate a flat character. For example, in 101 Dalmatians, it is easy to hate Cruella de Vil because she, in general, is a horribly rude and insulting person that goes out of her way to demean everyone around her. She also has a desire to kill innocent puppies so she can be more fashionable and doesn't care how the furs are acquired. Cruella is a typical Chaotic Evil character that has layers that make someone watching 101 Dalmatians not even feel a bit of sadness from her demise.
Does this mean that the people watching 101 Dalmatians have a desire to annihilate Cruella de Vil? Arguably yes, but I also see that the word "annihilation" does not seem to encompass the actual sentiment around a villain. While frequently the sentiment that a villain must be destroyed for their actions (particularly in RPGs) not all villains are so easy to do away with. For example, Darth Vader is without a doubt an evil character from the Star Wars franchise, but I don't think he had a moment where you wanted to see him annihilated. Perhaps it was always because he had someone around him that seemed a bit more hateable, be it Grand Moff Tarkin or Emperor Palpatine both of those 2 seem much more deserving of annihilation. With this in mind, is a character's desire to annihilate really indicative of a good villain or is it something else?
Ultimately it seems in RPGs as well as in video games that the ultimate goal is to annihilate the villains, be it through mini-bosses or general exploration, but along that journey, the villain must do something to provoke this desire. Whether it's Ganondorf stealing Princess Zelda, Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 who berates you and tries to kill you at any moment so he can unleash the ultimate warrior to rule the word, or GLaDOS who crushes your soul and forces you to do tests and kill your only companion for her own amusement, the villain always provokes wrath. So while a desire to annihilate tends to make its way into the picture, a villain generally finds a way to provoke that feeling, and that may be one of the more complicated things to determine when creating a villain. So the question may not be what should the villain do so the players hate him/her, but rather, what sort of things will the villain do to incur the wrath of the players and could potentially lead to the villains demise? Just remember, when a party meets with a villain, it doesn't have to be the final battle.