At least from my perspective, as a long time, regular WoW player, what is interesting is not this new "switch genders" feature (which is really just part of a trend toward more in-game customizable features that came with the most recent expansion package), but the gender fluidity (or more precisely, superfluity) that exists in the game as a whole. It's a social phenomenon, not an official selection offered by some programmers at Blizzard. Gender in WoW is really more like an accessory - it's a way to develop a particular "look" that is unrelated to actual game play. That's no small thing, mind you, in a game where half the attraction is getting cool-looking gear and acquiring a collection of exotic creatures to ride.

I started playing WoW when my boyfriend wanted me to try it out. We both played female toons ("toons" is usually what they are called, by the way, not "characters," which implies more of a background and roleplaying vibe that is mostly lacking unless you are on a roleplaying-specific server). No one cared. During our brief stint on a roleplaying server, his toon got "involved" with another female toon, who was also played by a man. Again, no one cared. We now belong to a Christian-based guild (long story) that is populated by a large number of fairly conservative Christians, and they do just as much gender-bending (if you can even call it that) as anyone else. I don't think that is some sign of secret yearnings for flexible gender roles -- I think it represents that they really are not connecting gender as we think of it in real life with gender as is conceived in WoW. In wow, it's a style choice.

That's not to say that it is a completely neutral style choice. The only reason I've ever though of making a male toon is so that it can where plate armor without the leggings failing to cover up a significant portion of the upper thighs. There are some indications that the female designs are done with a fair amount of thought put in to what would appeal about them to male fans (I'm guessing lesbian and bi-sexual female fans weren't really a target demographic, though who knows). And they insist on putting busoms on everything, even things that should not have human-looking busoms (upright walking cows with two breasts, for example). And they have a tendency to make the famale version of such things a s trolls and orcs significantly less hideous than the male version. So there's a lot of interesting stuff about gender going on there. But as far as the player-to-toon gender thing, I really don't think there's a "there" there.

It somewhat reminds me, though, of the many tabletop roleplaying games in which I have participated, where the male gamemasters completely ignored the existence of any type of sexism in their made-up, medieval-esque worlds. They would exist that in their fantasy universe, sexism wasn't an issue. Though there was a funny tendency for us to continually discover some iteration of the one true king, like, every other game.

While I believe you that those players exist, I think I've encountered exactly 1 person who cared upon discovering that a female toon was played by a male player in the two years I've been playing the game. And that was when the male player had specifically tried to keep his real life gender a secret.

This, by the way, in a game where you regularly have to turn off chat channels to avoid hearing everything of the "not-good" variety described as "gay." You can only call it cognitive dissonance if you assume there's some cognition involved.