British print mag CVG serves up a preview of WoW: The Burning Crusade on their online site with particular emphasis on the races:

During the last year and a half, various posts have sprung up in the WOW forums debating the visual appeal of the Horde and Alliance avatars. One of the theories was that players (with a side-note towards female ones) weren’t choosing Horde characters because, well, they’re a bit nasty-looking. In the US, Alliance players far outweigh the Horde ones, although we evil-inclined Europeans tend to sway a little more towards the dark side.

It certainly looks like a factor Blizzard have taken onboard when developing the Alliance-based Draenei and the Hordish Blood Elves, their new characters for WOW’s expansion, The Burning Crusade. Frank Pearce, senior VP of product development at Blizzard, explains further: “The aesthetic look of our new characters was certainly a consideration and it wasn’t just a consideration for female players. In Asia, we’ve found that players of both genders are more attracted to the Alliance characters, which they find more visually pleasing. But mainly, we just wanted to focus on making the content fun and compelling, which will draw people to it regardless of their gender or culture.”