First to post in epic thread...

So I decided to do it. I figured hey, everyone has been why not me? So here I go, about to embarked on my "epic journey" through blogging by taking you through my journey of being a "chick" GM in the World of Warcraft.

So I figured I better start off by giving you a little background behind myself to start this thread out right.

My name is Rachel, also known as Napaeae to everyone in my guild and on my server of Uldaman. I have been playing for just shy of 4 years and have been GMing just a couple months shy of that. I have been holy since I started playing way back when and only recently have dabbled in the shadow specs since dual-specifications have come out with patch 3.1.

I originally GMed one of the largest casual guilds on Uldaman called the Elder Ones along with my husband for over 2 years during vanilla wow and part of the burning crusade. Around approximately that time my husband and I had a little surprise and found out I was pregnant. I had morning sickness to the extreme and the game made me too nauseous to play so my husband took over GM duties for awhile. We had two types of players in the Elder Ones, the casual players who just liked to level, quest and play alts, and the raiders. Sometime shortly after TBC started, we passed the Elder Ones off to a trusted friend and created a guild called Sufferance and took a semi-backseat role to leading the guild. Unfortunately Sufferance did not survive past much of Tier 5 content and fell apart while I was in the hospital giving birth on July 1st 2008 to my wonderful daughter named Caitlin.

After my return to the game and sitting in a guild with no one in it, (and feeling much better with baby outside of me!) I decided to start a casual PUG guild called Badges R US since there was really not much time left to TBC until the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Badges R US catered to players who didn't have a guild and wanted a community of players who just wanted to run anything from regular instances to T6 content. We hosted a community where players could sign up for completely PUGged raids. Week after week we had guilded, non-guilded, very experienced and not so experienced players come together and learn as a group through the content right up to Illidan.

By PUGging and networking, Badges R US had invited a lot of great players who, as a guild, wanted to pursue guild only raiding come the expansion. Badges R US closed its doors and reopened under the new name of After Midnight at the start of WotLK.

And that where we are now; We have cleared all 3.1 content except for OS with 3 drakes up, we’re working on General Vezax and have completed 1 hardmode by changing the order of Iron Council killings. I along with my assistant GM Forth (my husband has since taken a backseat to leading himself) deal with the day to day workings of After Midnight and work through any issues, lead raids, and generally act as information specialists for the guild.

My goal through this blog is to document how we lead, my experience with being a woman GM and the stigmas and issues that have been associated with it as well as showing my readers the female perspective to being a leader. I’m hoping to be able to let you into my world with my posts and possibly get some interviews going with other GMs to cover topics of interests to all guild leaders whether woman or man.

Happy hunting!