Recently in World of Warcraft Category

Yee, Nicholas. "The Demographics of Gender-Bending." The Daedalus Project. 2003

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000551.php?page=2

Schmieder, Christian. "World of Maskcraft vs. World of Queercraft? Communication, sex and gender in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft." Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds. Volume 1. Issue 1. pp 2 - 21. 2008.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18758796/Journal-of-Gaming-and-Virtual-Worlds-Volume-1-Issue-1

ABSTRACT:
This article examines the construction, representation and commingling of gender identity in the online role-playing game (RPG) World of Warcraft. I show how players on German-speaking non-RPG servers blend gender by using linguistic markers of gender (like specific articles and suffixes) in an interchangeable way. Subsequent to this analysis, possible consequences for the online world as an opposition to 'offline reality' and as a space for negotiation of gender identity are discussed. Focusing on different modes of communication while playing, I develop a more differentiated view on communication, sex and gender in online communities - a view that goes beyond an assumption of simplistic, one-dimensional gender bending.

MacCallum-Stewart, Esther. Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games." Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture. Volume 2. 2008.

http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/35/537

ABSTRACT:
Players in online games frequently choose the opposite gender when they select an avatar. Previously, this has been attributed to a player's unconscious sexual anxieties and the need to experiment through the anonymous location of the avatar. However, this paper argues that the development of choice in games, where players have frequently selected the female form for ludic reasons, means that this choice has become normalised through a historical process. The avatar is frequently considered as a tool, with gender regarded as a freely admitted aesthetic pleasure. The player does not see this as a site of tension, or seeks to absolve this tension publicly as an act of appropriation typical to Jenkins¬π textual poachers. Overall, the act of gender switching is not considered deviant within gaming; more, it is embraced as a common practise with historical precedents to support it.

Corneliussen, Hilde G.. "World of Warcraft as a Playground for Feminism". in Digital Culture, Play, and Identity.  chapter 3, pages 63-87. ed. by Corneliussen, Hilde G. and  Jill Walker Rettberg. MIT Press, May 2008.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11402&mode=toc