This was changed for two reasons, 1) because it could be abused in cases such as the Beggar addons, it still can be abused but now it's not free, 2) because it could put some scripts in undefined states where we weren't expecting players to change their gender at anytime. We were also working on a shop update in the same update that we planned on addressing this, so we took the opportunity to solve it by adding it in the shop for a very cheap price (only 2 shop coins). We consider this an acceptable solution to both problems, as it is no longer free and you must be offline to change your gender now.
If changing your gender matters that much to you that you can't afford it for 0.2 EUR, then purchasing premium scrolls ingame from the market which was introduced in the same update may be a viable option to you. As much as we want to satisfy the 80%+ of users who want us to make it free, it wasn't changed for monetary reasons, if it was we wouldn't have put it at only 2 shop coins. It was changed to address the issues I mentioned.