Why, hello there! My name is Cynthia Hall, and this is my very own little corner of the internether. Some of you may recognize me from various WoW TCG events as one of Cryptozoic Entertainment's demo girls. I am a product specialist with Apotheosis Agency and work closely with Cryptozoic to promote the WoW TCG. This includes modeling various World of Warcraft costumes crafted by yours truly. I walked a long path to gain the opportunities I have now, and I will share some of my future adventures with all of you!

First things first: I am not a gamer girl. Gaming is a hobby to me, not a definition of myself. I grew up playing consoles and never thought anything was peculiar about having a hobby that many of my friends didn't share. As I came into my teen years, I found a small group of girls at school who would rather play RPGs and talk about how insert-male-lead-here is the perfect guy for them than obsess over equally unattainable Hollywood types.

By my mid- to late-teens, I was rolling with a crowd which was unsurprisingly predominantly male. We spent our days stealth-installing and playing Half-Life and Quake III Arena on all of the computers in our high school campus work labs because one of our friends was the son of the network administrator and had 'Dem Skillz'. I also learned the basics of Magic: The Gathering from a friend who used to win Southern California tournaments, but I never went very far with the game because I seemed doomed to never draw lands. That was my only TCG experience prior to learning the WoW TCG.

Moving into to the World of Warcraft MMO seemed a natural evolution. I was a hardcore player of Ragnarok Online since beta, and the majority of my guildies left the Chaos server to start playing WoW when beta testing opened. Things kept crumbling from there, and I was eventually persuaded by my local friends to start playing WoW on a trial. I played Diablo II on the side for about a year at that time and was interested in seeing Blizzard's new IP. Although I enjoyed the smooth gameplay, gorgeous environments (sup, Teldrassil), and the focus on questing instead of all-out grinding for experience, I was not immediately taken. I felt I had a duty to serve on Ragnarok Online and couldn't justify paying for two monthly subscriptions or splitting my free time between two high-maintenance games.

When The Burning Crusade (TBC) was approaching release, I finally cracked. I started up a new account in december of 2006 on the Bronzebeard server, which is where the majority of my local friends were established. I played to level 70 in the new expansion largely by myself since my friends were busy farming out Molten Core and Naxxramas, then grinding themselves to 70 when TBC launched. By the time I hit 70, my friends had merged into the top guild on server and I had the pleasure of partaking in raids that weren't complete disasters. At that time, when Tier 4 was the cool gear to have, I decided to train myself to become a hardcore raider.

I quickly learned that world progression guilds did not mesh very well with my college schedule or native language (sigh), so I stayed on Bronzebeard. I worked my way up into the guild competing for second rank on server during progression in Hyjal raid. The guild exploded when our Guild Master had the nerve to pass his Bar Exam, and I bounced around multiple guilds all the way through to Wrath of the Lich king. I did snag a trial for the top guild on the server, but all of their members came back when the Ulduar raid content was released and I decided to join another guild after waiting three weeks for an invitation. Eventually, I gave up on ol' “Dramabeard” and was more than happy to transfer my main character off of that server to the Elune server pre-Cataclysm, where she now sits at level 85.

I primarily play a night elf discipline priest. I have many level 80 alternates which I will soon work on getting to 85, but I prefer playing a priest. I already have a worgen priest in the works, and I may start a goblin priest to play with some of my Horde friends. Priests, priests, priests! I would apply for a raid spot this expansion instead of focusing on all of these alts, but it's simply not possible: Cataclysm will be a rather casual affair since real life has become quite busy for me.

Over the years, I was always making costumes and doing other crafty things. I discovered the cosplay hobby by accident when some game forums were talking about cosplay at local conventions. I was happy to discover this new community and continued making costumes from my favorite games – eventually making costumes from the WoW MMO itself. I gained a reputation for being “that girl who makes tier sets,” and things grew from there. People began calling me by my online handle at events, and I have been in many publications and was interviewed for dozens of television shows, websites, and podcasts in the last three years alone. When Jo-Jo Chen decided to start up Apotheosis Agency, she invited me to join her team as a product specialist for my costuming talents and knowledge about World of Warcraft and other games.

In the agency, I finally had friends with interests exactly like mine, and we all kept talking about wanting to learn the WoW TCG. We learned how to play at Majestix in Costa Mesa and proceeded to construct our own decks to play against each other, my own being a Mage Control deck that I still keep ripping apart to keep things “interesting” when playing with friends. When NACC 2010 came around, we decided to go to Las Vegas to play in League to get a bit more experience with the game by playing with different people than our usual group.

On the final day of the tournament, we came in costume to have a casual day – but it was anything but that! We were suddenly swept into Cryptozoic's podium photos and did various other pictures with the top 8 players. Everything suddenly took off. Cryptozoic was excited to have enthusiastic and knowledgeable girls on board to promote the TCG and run demos at events. I am one of several girls in our core team which travels with Cryptozoic when they request that we accompany them to events. We do everything we can to keep the TCG classy and fun for newcomers and veteran players alike.

My focus here at Daily Metagame will be on life outside of and infused with the WoW TCG. I will show you a side of the game that is beyond tournaments and competitive deckbuilding. Hey, not all of us have the time or opportunities to train to be the very best! I'll break things down to show you how the happenings on the MMO transition over to the TCG in order to help those of you just jumping in to the trading card game to understand various cards and concepts that you can use for deckbuilding without feeling too overwhelmed. I can help those of you who live in isolated areas – my boonie buddies -- find fun ways to keep your casual games with the same groups of people interesting. I'll also take you on my own journeys to events and show you what the TCG community is up to near and far, and I will also give you a glimpse behind the scenes of the TCG we all love.

Since I'm now a casual player on the MMO and also in the TCG, my bi-weekly column is a nod to casuals everywhere. Fully rested heroes, I salute you.

-Cynthia Hall

Cynthia Hall is a product specialist for Apotheosis Agency who works closely with Cryptozoic to demo and promote the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. She delights in long prowls on the beach with her Spectral Tiger, Spectral Kitten, and Spectral Boyfri – erm, her boyfriend. When not hard at work keeping the TCG classy, she produces wearable armor set replicas for fun and profit.