What's the best way to get Lesser Charms of Fortune every week? Although Blizzard recently reduced the amount of Lesser Charms of Fortune players need each week (by lowering the requirement for the weekly quest Mogu Coins of Fate from 90 charms to 50 charms) we've still got to get them somewhere. So what's the best way?

Prior to patch 5.3, it seemed like everyone was swearing by pet battles. Players were claiming they'd earned hundreds to thousands of Lesser Charms just killing critters in Stormwind. A hotfix eventually nerfed the drop chance for Lesser Charms in lower level pet battles, but higher level pet battles are still rewarding charms to anyone who wants to put in the time. Is it still worth it?

Patch 5.3 has also added a couple of changes to Lesser Charm collection to really mix up the equation. Level 90 creatures that are outdoors in the world now have a chance to drop Lesser Charms of Fortune, while rare spawns in Pandaria and bosses in Battlefield: Barrens are guaranteed to always drop the charms. The result of this? Hordes of players in Northern Barrens farming Lesser Charms off the new Kor'kron mobs there.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

For those of you planning to attend BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard has posted a friendly reminder on its community sites that ticket information needs to be finalized by Tuesday, May 14 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. That's tomorrow night, so get to it if you haven't already done so.

BlizzCon Ticket Reminder: Attendee Information Deadline-May 14

If you purchased BlizzCon 2013 tickets for family or friends, just a reminder you have until next Tuesday, May 14 to enter or edit attendee information, including:

• The names to be printed on the badges.
• Battle.net account names for the pre-show online merchandise sale for BlizzCon ticket holders-more details to come. (Please note that only registered accounts will be able to access this pre-show sale.)
• Optional game information such as World of Warcraft character, realm, clan, and BattleTag.

If this information hasn't been entered by May 14, all badges will default to the name on the purchaser's Battle.net account. Don't miss the opportunity to customize your badges!

For more info, check out the Badge Information page.

Head to your Order History within Battle.net account management to edit attendee information before it's too late!

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This information is particularly important if you're getting your ticket through a friend or family member. If the name on your ticket does not match the name on your photo ID, you will not be able to pick up your badge on your own. That, and if you don't select your franchise preferences, you might end up with a Diablo III badge instead of a World of Warcraft one. You wouldn't want that, would you?

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Filed under: BlizzCon

Happy Mother's Day! I suspect that many WoW Insider readers are probably not mothers themselves (though surely some of you are), but I do know most of you are human, which means most of you have a mother or two. As such, I thought I'd use the day to ask this question: what would your mother play in WoW? Would she be a paladin? A warlock? Would she roll as a gnome or a tauren? What about her spec?

To answer the question myself, I really had to consider all the angles. Generally I think of my mother as being very kind and nurturing, but I've also seen her stand up to people three times her size and threaten the neighborhood bullies with a gaze of death when I got picked on as a kid. All in all, I figure she's probably a druid since she's fairly attuned to nature and can make anything grow. She'd probably go main spec kitty DPS (she has her moments of being super sneaky) and restoration as her secondary spec. As for what race she'd be ... I see her more as a night elf but I know she'd pick tauren since the cows are so cute.

My stepmother, on the other hand, would totally go dwarf elemental shaman. Granted, she'd probably also have four level 90 alts and a bunch of battleground achievements ... She's pretty hardcore when she gets into stuff. She's told me herself that she'd get addicted if she ever started.

So, what about your mothers?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Earlier this week, WoW Insider's Matthew Rossi argued that there is no point in distinguishing between hardcore and casual players, and that doing so actually detracts from the game. I, however, don't agree and will be presenting a counterpoint in this article. So, if you haven't read Rossi's side yet, be sure to check it out first.

Now before I explain why I think the distinction between hardcore and casual is useful, I think it's necessary that we all be on the same page as far as what hardcore and casual actually are. I found Rossi's argument against the usage of these words particularly flawed because he was working around an assumed and rigid definition of what a hardcore player and a casual player are. Toward the end of his article he pointed out that the casual/hardcore metric doesn't work when you consider the various ways in which some players are engaging with the game. Not every player raids, he explained, but that doesn't mean they can't be hardcore.

Now, I agree with that for the most part, but I disagree with his understanding of hardcore and casual. You see, hardcore and casual are not and have never been part of any metric. It's actually impossible for them to have ever been since the definition of casual and hardcore is subjective. Ask any two people what kind of behavior distinguishes a casual player from a hardcore player and the answer will be different in some way ... And if the definition of something varies from person to person, it can't logically be used as a standard of measurement.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding

Today on WoW Moviewatch, Wowcrendor presents us with a simple question: how easy do you think World of Warcraft could become? The context for this question obviously being that players are constantly complaining how easy the game has become over the years. Thoughts, anyone? Rants? Well-argued essays?

Anyway, to answer the question, Wowcrendor employs his usual style wherein which Billy presents the question and Crendor responds with several, increasingly absurd answers. I won't spoil any of the jokes (though I really want that robot) so just give it a watch.

I have to admit, it really is astonishing that Billy has retained his innocence and naivety over the years. You'd think after being slapped around by the harshness of reality so many times he'd have become jaded by now. But I guess he really is resilient ... Or maybe just extremely oblivious. Either way, props to you Billy. I wish I had your tenacity.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Did you ever think Ragnaros might not be such a bad guy, and that maybe he's just really, really misunderstood? Probably not, but you will after you watch the latest machinima from Slightly Impressive. In the video, Ragnaros explains what actually happened in Molten Core back during vanilla WoW. He also makes a fairly good point about how we shouldn't take crazy dreams too seriously. Sound advice, seeing as I once had a dream where the WoW Insider staff tried to recreate The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyway, I think this machinima shows off Griffter's strengths well. The setup and the script are genuinely funny and the voice actors execute it all perfectly. I'd actually really love to see this become a short series with a different boss each episode, provided Griff can keep the jokes fresh. Even if it stays a one-shot though, this is one of my favorites to date.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Warning: This video is Not Safe For Work. There's some occasional cursing and Princess Theradas flaunting her Willendorfer assets for several seconds.

I'm always excited to see new work from renowned machinima artist Ian Beckman. Mind you, I'm a bit biased since the two of us are acquainted (we briefly attended the same university -- he made me choke on my drink once while doing his Azerothian Super Villains Akama voice). Today's video is a parody of the song Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, featuring Wanz. The parody tells the story of a goblin on his quest to look awesome using vanilla tier gear and transmogrification.

As a machinima parody the piece certainly does its job in recreating the original song and music video, but it's definitely not Beckman's best parody. The lyrics don't really capture the original, lacking both the fun humor of Macklemore's rap lyrics, and the energy and clarity of Wanz's chorus. In regards to the latter point, I think this is part to Beckman doing his best to imitate Wanz's deep vocals but not quite being suited for it. Pulling in another singer to do the part probably would have made it better.

I'm probably being a bit unfair in my critique though, simply because I'm so familiar with Beckman's work. If this was produced by some no name machinima artist I'd probably be perfectly happy with it. You also have to consider what an incredibly difficult song Thrift Shop is to parody, with its many layers of instruments and vocals. Beckman certainly nails the distinct sound of the original and that's no small feat. I really do love the concept of this parody, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that Beckman might keep working on it to fine tune some of the shortcomings.

As an afterthought, I have to say I enjoy how this video clip fits in with the rest of Beckman's work. He's been playing since vanilla and it's always interesting to see how that inspires his present day work, like That's the World of Warcraft That I Used To Play. Transmog Shop gives off a similar vibe to Beckman's Gotye parody, using a new WoW feature to harken back to the old. It offers a nice contrast to other popular machinima and parody artists whose works tend to only reflect the current expansion.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

The WoW community is so old and so large that there's often a dispute about where to go to get the best information about your class. In the past, Elitist Jerks was often recommended as the one-stop, hot spot, but nowadays the best class resources seem to be speckled around the web at sites like HowToPriest.com or Totem Spot. So what do you do if you want to find it all in one place? The WoW resource site Icy Veins (probably best known for their dungeon guides) is looking for an answer to that question.

Earlier today Icy Veins announced that their class guides have been reviewed and approved by players from top guilds and other notable members of the community. Looking for an up-to-date elemental shaman guide? How about one that's been approved by Leeds from the guild Method? Or maybe you'd like a mistweaver monk guide checked off by DREAM Paragon monk, Unpl?

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Filed under: News items

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

A while back Spiritual Guidance looked at the various upgrade options for priests in patch 5.2. Today we'll be discussing which of those upgrades you want to take, depending on whether you're a discipline or holy (the weighty topic of shadow will be covered next week). Discipline priests in particular saw some big changes with the release of patch 5.2 and will want to adjust their strategy for selecting new gear from here on. Since we're already talking about disc, let's start there.

Most of you probably know the basics. When gearing, don't take intellect downgrades and be sure to mostly select gear with spirit on it for mana regeneration. How much spirit do you want? There's no hard, set number to aim for; the goal is to find an amount that allows you to get through most encounters without running out of mana too early. This will be different for everyone so just go with what feels comfortable, remembering that you can always supplement a shortage of spirit with consumables (food and flasks) for fights that are more stressful on your mana pool than most others. (Rememeber that it's not necessary to gear for that one tough fight, and then be running surplus mana the rest of the time.)

With that said, let's look at what has really changed: secondary stats.

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Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

Want to know more about Blizzard's new digital card game, Hearthstone? During PAX East 2013, we spoke with Hearthstone Lead Designer Eric Dodds and Production Director Jason Chayes to learn some additional information about the game.

During the 20-minute interview, I asked the developers several questions, some on behalf of the lore nerds, others for the collectors among us. We discussed some of the game features planned for launch, as well as the possibility of implementing e-sports capabilities later. Also touched upon were the game's visual aspects, like the art work and animated game boards.

And for those of you with a history playing other strategy card games like Magic: The Gathering, I learned a bit more about Hearthstone gameplay and how the Forge works.

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Filed under: Blizzard, Hearthstone Insider