I'd take a stab a your video card for one. My mother and friends play WoW and my mom had a nVidia 6800 Ultra with 256MB of RAM and it couldn't handle the new expansion. You're trying this with an Intel built-in card. Upgrading my mother to an 8600 with 512MB of RAM fixed the problem. Before that the game would lock-up completely whenever Northrend would come into view. I also tried running WoW in Wine and had the same problems you describe when trying OpenGL mode. I don't think that WoW and Wine like OpenGL too much together. When running in D3D mode you have to remember that Wine is taking those D3D calls and modifying them then sending them to OpenGL. That takes time and is probably why your framerate is so low in Wine as opposed to Windows. Still, once you hit some of the end-game areas, you'll be upgrading your video card and I am sure Wine will be fine then.
