Start date
Total episodes at the time of the review
29
Horde for Life is a more or less weekly podcast dealing with news, email, and normally ending with a round table talking about subjects in the World of Warcraft. The show is called Horde for Life and has no issue being proudly Horde however from time to time Alliance players are known to get there messages onto the show. Hosted by Rich Fisher this is a solo podcast which honestly is one of the best Warcraft currently being put out.
What works
Simply put I like just about everything about this show. For starter Rich does a great job hosting this show. While I listen to a great many podcasts where I feel the hosts don’t have best voices for podcasting I still listen because a voice is only one part of a show. However when you have voice like Rich’s its should be used to podcasts until his dying breath. It’s a small things but its defiantly elevates the show from one that is good to one that is great.
One of my big issues when I listen to Warcraft podcasts is that so many of the hosts have no prospective. They haven’t played any MMO’s other than World of Warcraft and I love it as much as anyone but you can’t take the word of Blizzard as gospel as to many do. Rich thinks through a statement, talks about the logical consequences of that actions and often calls bullshit on Activion-Blizzard when they make a statements that are silly.
Rich’s calls out and fights his audience. I know a lot of Podcasters do this, but its normally done is very dickish to elevate the host about this audience. “I’m right and your wrong.” Rich finds balance where he can combat his audience but at the same time he isn’t doing it because he is there better but rather he is doing it in controversial kind of way. See the way he took on many different people on the silhouette argument in reguard to gear customization.
The round table is great idea. Rather than having a different co-host for every show having them on for a short segment much like the Old Jim Rome is Burning lets them tackle an issue but at the same time doesn’t force the full show to be about that issue. And if the co-host doesn’t work it doesn’t drag down the show either.
What fails.
The Introduction to the show is simple to long between the preview and the static introduction its can clock it at almost three and a half minutes. Yes I know there is a forward bottom but as a fairly new listener it took me about ten different goes over three months until I finally got all the way through the introduction to the meat of the show. The point of and introduction is to hook a listener. In news papers its said if you don’t hook the reader in first sentence they most likely won’t read the article. This podcast can hook just about anyone with its content there is no need to make them question the quality of the show because they fell asleep during the battle cry’s.
What can be improved?
“He’s dead Jim.” When a topic is dead let it rest is peace. In part I blame this on how I listened to most of the episodes of Horde for Life over the course of a few weeks than over the year which they were release so the holy crusade for armor customization was something I was sympathetic to it, however it got granting after a while. Normally I think Rich does a good job of walking the line between passion and overkill but in this area the topic has been dead for six months almost now I think we can let it rest. And I would also suggest a level of moderations in the future when there are other topics your passionate about.
The other thing I would suggest keep rotating the Horde for Life Round table. I enjoy hearing different voices from around the Warcraft community that I don’t normally hear. I’m not saying to you need to go to Twisted Nether Blogcast levels of guests but I think it would only help the show to keep bring people in to talk to different people about different subjects.
Should you be listening?
Every once in a while you look at your mp3 player and you look at the lists of shows and while you love them your long for the next great things to hit your ears. For me Horde for Life was one of those gem podcasts that after I finally got pasted the introduction I downloaded the whole archive. In a world where so many Warcraft podcasters are threaded by Star Wars Rich finds both the good and bad in both games looks critically at it both. This makes for some of the best MMO’s analysis I have heard.
Download Horde of Life, do it now.
Score
5 for 5
Be seeing you.
Villain
Deimos, Mars
