The Wow launcher / updater has been running on wine since at least mop launch. Make sure you are using latest version from the PPA if you are having problems.
The character preview and map problem is a Blizzard bug with opengl mode they refused to fix. There is a work around for the map by using an addon. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6712862205
Or you can take the performance hit and run using d3d9.
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