Why did they change all the voice actors?

[Gilraen]

English voice acting tends to be treated as one-and-done or contracted for a specific period under the notion that they wouldn't be needed later. A classically bad example of this was the Dragonball/Dragonball Z series where they had around 3-4 different voices for Goku, 2-3 for Vegeta and Picollo. It's not really bad management, either. It's about predicting demand in relation to budget and contract time. Yoshida probably had the original voice actors only contracted up to the completion of all of 2.0's voiced cutscenes. You know, treating XIV like his Final Fantasy MMO. I have no doubt he tried to get his old voice actors back but they probably wanted more money so he went with someone else. Probably how we got different Gokus and Vegetas, too.

[Chessala]

Good choice in changing them but honestly, English dubs usually suck majorly and this game is no exception. It's emotionless, flat, the voiced do NOT fit the characters and...shall I go on? I don't think I will bother.

[Laraul]

So I just saw the new launch trailer for Heavensward and noticed they changed the voice actors for all the main characters.

We have no idea who are the ones speaking in the trailer. I think it's a too early to say that they altered any or all of the voice actors at this point. Wait till we have a chance to view the game ourselves once it's released.

[Gilraen]

What caught me was a bit of unconnected voice. Someone talking whose voice I didn't recognize and didn't have a face on screen talking. I wonder if they voiced our characters. Doubt it, but it's something I noticed.

[Hyrist]

Voice in scene with Alphy is actually Pipin, my group is currently speculating. Though it did sound like 2/3 Grand Company leadership changed voice actors.

Hard to keep them on long term - and, to a degree, people complaining about voice acting in NA and their quality could be partly to blame here. Or it could be the VAs were asking for too much for the next go-around. So many unknown factors. Best not to dwell on it.

[Kaelah]

I kinda like Merlwyb's new voice. To me quite a few sounded different too. It's not through choice they change them, sometimes original VAs have other commitments at the times they are needed back so they have to be replaced.

[SummonerSenah]

Merlwyb and Alphinaud were different. It sounded like the others were the same though. Merlwyb's is at least pretty close to the original, but Alphinaud is not close at all.

[Whiteroom]

I liked them more. I always found Alphinaud and Minfillas voices annoying.

[Draxxion]

It comes down to real life stuff really. Could they get the person who did the voices previously? Has that person's prices for work gone up? Are they already signed up for a different engagement? There is a lot of reasons why they can't get the person any more or had to change. You can hope they get someone close to the original voice, but more often then not it is really hard to do that. Real life case in point I like to point to for this situation is what happened to the Richard Harris who played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies. He died. They had to replace him with someone. Even I could tell that Michael Gambon's acting style was different and his mannerisms were different. But, that is what real life can do. Not saying that anyone died here with these voice actors of course, but just saying real life things happen and can change things.

[Balipu]

You know what I find funny? This is exactly like the "Au Ra is a copy of X race" debate. There people were swearing on the virginity of their sisters that Au Ra are copies of either Hyur, Elezen or Mi'qote. And they couldn't agree which.

Now they changed "All the voice actors" which means that either one or two of Merlwyb, Raubahn and Alphinaud has been changed. But we can't really agree which.