Can they resist their addiction of causing suffering? Do they want to? Can they have good intentions?
No and yes. They canât resist the addiction to cause suffering, it is an intrinsic part of what they have become. They can focus it, so like my Death Knight who was a police/militia investigator in life who causes suffering only to Criminals in a less extreme version of Judge Death.
It is such a strong urge that it even overrides other such things, for example High/Blood Elf Death Knights find their Mana addiction no longer troubles them, but they have to cause suffering instead.
Can they have good intentions?
Undoubtedly, they -can- even show higher emotions, as well as baser ones. They can suffer from Cowardice, such as Orbaz Bloodbane at Lights Hope in the starting DK quests. They can feel Familial love, such as Thassarian does for his living sister in Borean Tundra, they can even feel genuine bonds of friendship, such as Thassarian and Koltira.
They could have good -intentions-, but somewhere down the line, someone is going to end up brutally slaughtered, even if just âbad guysâ
They canât change their nature, but they can try to focus how it expresses itself.
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The endless hunger will soon take hold of you, death knight. When it does, you will feel pain immeasurable. There is only one remedy for the suffering: the hunger must be sated.
I give you the key to your salvation.
Chained to the Heart of Acherus are those deemed unworthy of the dark brotherhood. Use the key to free an unworthy initiate. Allow them to equip their gear and battle you for their freedom. Kill and the pain will cease. Fail and suffer for eternity.
Live or die - the choice is yours to make.
It is one of the very first quests you do when you make a Death Knight⌠atleast in itâs original starting zone.
Cdev round 2 also have a little more information on this addiction.
Are blood elf death knights still afflicted by their racial addiction to magic?
No, though their new addiction, the one all Ebon Blade death knights possess, is arguably worse: the need to inflict pain. If death knights do not regularly inflict agony upon another creature, they begin to suffer wracking pains that could drive them into a mindless, blood-seeking hysteriaâa far worse fate than that of those who suffer from arcane withdrawal
I am not sure what is hinted to when saying agony.
The line itself is rather vague as to what extend a death knight have to go to sate that âendless hungerâ.
The aforementioned questline you are told you need to kill someone for it to be sated.
âCausing agonyâ is extremely vague though, but this is where I would consider the very being who created the Death Knights to begin with⌠the Lich King.
He purposefully put such an âaddictionâ into the Death Knights, and what would his intention be? To kill of course.
So why would the âaddictionâ be sated merely by making a small cut.
The Death Knights created by the Bolvar Lich King though⌠they may be different⌠fourth generation death knights 
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Too bad I want to roleplay a Loarderonian 2nd generation death knight. I like to imagine little background stories for my chars so I guess I will imagine that she doesnât torture creatures/people with pleasure. Except if they deserve it lol.
I donât believe Second generation Death Knights actually have the need to kill. As far as I know that was some âbuilt inâ mechanism by Arthas or his servants, for the third generation Death Knights.
I still have my doubts about the 4th gen DKs (the Ebon Blade and/or Bolvar made, like allied races DK, etc) have that drawback either⌠
It sounds cool but it was a stupid thing to keep ingame without some sort of quest to âfreeâ them of it.
I mean presumably they still have it as we havenât heard otherwise. So why are the Ebon Blade not just going around massacring everyone?
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Because thatâs how the mechanism works. If they donât regularly kill they will start massacring anyone who crosses their path, be it friend or foe.
Killing/inflicting agony prevents them from doing it, odd as that may sound.
Afaik it has never been retconned.
But I really have a hard time imagining an undead fox who needs to inflict pain and agony in order to keep their sanity.
I think we should build a huge bonfire and get rid of them all.
Rather safe than sorry, I say!
Uruk is a Tauren, so he never had any humanity to begin with. 
Tell us about your Taurenity then! 
âŚor the lack of it 
I cant. The lesser races are unworthy of knowing our secrets. 
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We mostly do.
The Legion-Mount Quest has you torturing a Dragon for information and the option to kill every living thing in the Red Sanctum.
The Orderhall-Questline has you storming the Paladin Orderhall, to resurrect Tirion as a Deathknight (it fails, but we still tried), and killing dozens to get to the right corpses to turn etc.
So we do, we just channel it mostly for the âgreater goodâ
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