It’s hard to find a good guild, but VISAGE helps connect women and gender minorities with friendly guilds

I’ve been a guild leader for over a decade now, leading a medium-sized World of Warcraft AOTC raiding guild that’s LGBT and ND friendly. One of my biggest challenges is screening applicants to protect the culture of the guild and ensuring it remains a safe place for our members. But on the other side of the equation, how do players find guilds that are friendly to women and minorities, particularly if they’re interested in raiding?

That’s how I discovered VISAGE, an organization that helps women, nonbinary persons, and other gender minorities find a place to call home in World of Warcraft. The group particularly aims to support players trying to break into the male-dominated competitive gaming space — whether that means Mythic raiding, Mythic+ dungeons, or PVP. VISAGE has partnered with Raider.io to run the VISAGE Verified Guild Program, which marks guilds as friendly to gender minorities, making it easier for players to find a group that will welcome them. The program currently includes over a hundred guilds, and you can search specifically for guilds that are VISAGE Verified.

After reading the program guidelines and applying to join with my guild, I reached out to VISAGE to find out more about the organization. I spoke with Gogogadgetkat, the Executive Director of VISAGE, to learn just what the group is doing to help women and gender minorities and what their plans are for 2025. Whether you’re a player looking for a supportive guild, a guild leader trying to grow your roster, or an ally looking for ways to support gender minorities in gaming, here’s what you need to know about VISAGE.

How would you describe VISAGE to someone who doesn’t know what it is?

VISAGE stands for Visibility, Inclusivity, Support, and Advocacy in Gaming and Esports. We aim to provide a supportive network through which women, nonbinary persons, and those belonging to other gender minorities can seek a safe space to discuss and learn about World of Warcraft with other like minded people. We aim to identify, discuss, and subvert the barriers to entry that have long kept gender minorities from reaching the pinnacle of endgame World of Warcraft the way their male counterparts have done.

Why does VISAGE exist?

The broader WoW community still feels pretty darn hostile towards women and other gender minorities, and that hostility seems to increase as you move up in rank, whether you’re raiding, keying, or PVPing. In 2021, we looked at the Race to World First and Hall of Fame guilds’ rosters and then asked on Twitter, “Women of WoW, are you raiding at the level you’d like to be? If not, why not?” The myriad of answers we received frequently mirrored our own experiences as WoW players (and gamers in general), but also had us curious to investigate the deeper social barriers that had long contributed to such poor gender minority representation in WoW esports. Through VISAGE, we hope to provide the education and strong community support necessary to overcome the broken ladders and circuitous barriers to entry that gender minorities have long encountered in gaming.

Who is the target audience for VISAGE?

First and foremost, we hope to be a go-to resource for gender minority WoW players, but allies who are interested in listening, learning, and honing their allyship are also very much welcome and appreciated!

How did you first get involved with VISAGE?

I’ve been involved with VISAGE since our very first meeting in 2021! I was already a member of leadership in a big WoW community, Perky Pugs, so I was familiar with some of the other founding members of VISAGE. I’m also a longtime raider and the GM of a Cutting Edge guild, and I fell easily into early discussions about my experiences as a woman trying to lead a guild through the shockingly hostile climate of the WoW raiding scene. I wrote our mission statement and with that, I think, managed to con (other founding members) Ferris and Hulahoops into letting me stick around!

How does VISAGE support women and other gender minorities in World of Warcraft?

In everything we do, we hope to empower, encourage, educate, and elevate gender minorities.

Our Mentorship Program is designed to empower and educate players through one-on-one mentorship with exceptional keyrunners, raiders, and raid leaders. Our hope is that offering these more individual, personalized learning opportunities may encourage gender minority players to broaden their horizons and strive for more success than they may have otherwise imagined for themselves.

The Featured Guild Program empowers, elevates, and encourages guilds and communities by highlighting those who prioritize an inclusive environment and involve gender minorities in the leadership process. These guilds must also abide by our Code of Conduct and undergo an application and interview process. Verified guilds receive a special badge and tag in Raider.Io’s recruitment system, are given access to a dedicated channel in the Recruitment & Community Discord, and are able to post their recruitment needs in the VISAGE Discord.

We host educational events about a variety of topics from gameplay workshops, to esports casting seminars, to roundtables about careers in esports. Attendees are given the opportunity to ask questions, and our events are available as VODs for perusal later. We try to emphasize gender minority representation where possible in our events, in the hopes that our community members are encouraged by those success stories and lived experiences.

Our Discord serves not only as the central hub for the initiative, but as our central community space, as well. Members can seek support for a myriad of different topics, discuss their new favorite book, share their pets or art, or simply find friends for their next Mythic+ group. Having a cohesive network of support is a key part of our work, as many gender minority gamers have rarely, if ever, been presented with a space that’s intended to be theirs.

Does VISAGE have programs supporting players in other games?

Not yet, but I would love to expand beyond WoW as this initiative grows and we add more talent and experience to our admin team. Many gaming spaces aren’t particularly friendly for gender minorities right now, and it’s a goal of mine to rectify that as much as possible. Gaming is for everyone, and there needs to be space for everyone to game.

How successful do you feel VISAGE is in achieving its goals?

I’m very proud of the work we’ve done thus far, especially as a small leadership team. Our Featured Guild Program currently hosts 102 total guilds, which are home to roughly 48,000 characters. We processed 253 mentee applications in 2024 alone! Participants in our first casting workshop were selected for real casting jobs in events such as Eve Ascension and Raider.IO’s Break the Meta, and we routinely see previous gender minority mentees return to us and apply to be mentors with fresh Cutting Edge and even Hall of Fame raiding experience under their belts.

Membership in our Discord community has grown by leaps and bounds, and it’s always so wonderful when newcomers to the server are delighted to have learned that we exist – that excitement alone helps me feel that we’re doing good work!

What would you say are VISAGE’s biggest challenges right now?

On the program side of things, our Mentorship Program is ever growing, and it’s difficult to keep up the pace! We constantly need more mentors to keep up with the influx of new mentee applications. In general, we are hurting for bandwidth and will soon need to expand our ranks in order to keep everything operating smoothly!

On a broader scale, however, it’s no secret that the current global political climate is not a particularly friendly one for initiatives like ours, and we’re often met with resistance and trolling whenever we happen to make waves. I anticipate that this kind of reaction will only become more common throughout the next few years. I have zero interest in giving up and VISAGE will undoubtedly weather that storm, but my heart always breaks a little when we need to try and find the right words to comfort a community of marginalized folks who are all too used to being let down, alienated, and villainized by those around them. I wish so much that we could do more to protect our members from the nastiness at work both in the broader WoW community and in IRL communities around the world.

What would you say is VISAGE’s biggest achievement to date?

We’ve had a number of quantifiable successes, but for me, each personal referral to our Discord feels like an important victory. Recently, a kind community member (THANK YOU, whoever you are!) mentioned us in an /r/wow Reddit thread, bringing a whole stampede of new faces through our doors. I came across that thread by chance, after several folks had already mentioned us. That kind of grassroots, word of mouth endorsement tells me that we’re fulfilling our purpose here in creating something that feels safe, trustworthy, and supportive for gender minorities and allies in World of Warcraft.

What are VISAGE’s goals for 2025?

In 2025, we’re planning to expand the resources we can offer guilds by developing a selection of resources to help guild leadership navigate difficult discussions and situations. There is no blueprint to running a perfect guild, and we certainly don’t have all the answers, but maybe we can make some processes a little bit easier for all guilds, not just those within our Featured Guild Program.

We’ll have our website up and running this year; visitors can read more about VISAGE leadership and history, apply to programs, and more. In conjunction with the site, we’re also aiming to finally unveil our VISAGE merch in 2025, which is so exciting! Merch sales will go towards event guests’ speaking fees, allowing us to host more and bigger educational content for our community.

As always, we want to continue to foster the growth of the VISAGE community by spreading the word and reaching new folks who are looking for a comfy, supportive network.

Everyone is welcome in VISAGE — please come say hello! (If you’re feeling a little shy and aren’t ready to introduce yourself to the Discord, pet pictures are also acceptable and VERY encouraged!)

How can you get involved with VISAGE

If  this struck a chord with you, it’s easy for guild leaders to submit their guilds to the program, and it’s easy for players to join the VISAGE community on Discord.

To submit your guild for consideration you will need the following:

• A guild that’s at least six months old.
• A guild recruitment profile on Raider.io.
• A guild Code of Conduct, and VISAGE has several examples to help make one if you don’t already have a Code of Conduct or want to update it.
• You will need to join the VISAGE Discord server.
• Fill out VISAGE’s Featured Guild application form.
• Women or other gender minorities represented in guild leadership.

The form took me about 20 minutes to fill in, and part of that was looking up information (like the date my guild was formed) and to write my responses. Filling out the form also got me to review our guild profile on Raider.io and to check our Code of Conduct, as it hadn’t been updated for a couple of years. If you apply, expect it to take several weeks for your application to be reviewed. Finally, if you’re accepted you’ll be able to use a special tag on Raider.io identifying you as a VISAGE Verified approved guild, and applicants can search for VISAGE Verified guilds..

If you’re looking for a guild, you can search for potential guilds by using the VISAGE Verified or Inclusive tags on Raider.io, then check the guild’s profile and raiding history to see if you would want to apply to join them. The Discord server also regularly posts about featured guilds who are actively recruiting, so it’s easy to connect with friendly guilds. But you don’t have to be a member of a verified guild to join the VISAGE Discord server, everyone is welcome provided they act respectfully — and you don’t have to be an elite raider (or a raider at all). The Discord has channels for players of all types, whether you’re looking for friendly dungeon groups or just want to socialize with an accepting community of gamers.

My experience so far is that they’re a super welcoming and supportive group of people, and the pet photos are first class.