I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since 2004. I currently main a troll resto shaman, but I started the game with a human rogue (combat). I have been playing the game mostly the entire time with large exceptions for big life events including final semesters of a degree program, my wedding, and the birth of my daughter. World of Warcraft gets a small amount of credit, also, for keeping my husband and I in contact when I left for undergraduate, and it was the platform he used to ask me out.

To say the game is important to the backdrop of my life is an understatement, a big one. I’m playing right now. I’ve got some emissaries to complete on my rogue for Princess Talanji.

I’m also an English and rhetoric geek. I graduated from UNC Charlotte with an English degree (minor in technical writing) in 2011. I graduated from NC State with a Master’s in technical communications four years later. Both programs, because of their tie in to technical writing, discussed rhetoric as it pertains to the digital world.

However, the World of Warcraft community has a big problem with gender- and sex-based exclusionary behavior and outright bigotry. WoW is far from the only game to have this issue, and there are certainly other more toxic communities in this way. It’s also unfair to say that gender and sex are the only social issues this game has - how players of color are treated is another big one.

And I’ll be the first to say that I really had a lot of growing to do myself before I could ever sit down and write any of this out.

My larger dream is to get my PhD in digital rhetoric focusing on this particular issue, but because I have not started a degree program yet, I decided the first way to really collect my thoughts and resources is to blog about it. Every week, I will sit down and either write about an issue in gaming overall, an issue in WoW, or focus specifically on academia and how a journal article relates to this topic. It will be awkward while I work out the kinks in my schedule and focus, but I hope to be interesting and educational without trying to chew off too much.

I look forward to talking with you all,
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