It was weird the first time, to have one character go completely unvoiced while being surrounded by other voiced characters. But now, in the goblin-themed content patch, it’s just sad. I have to keep glancing down at the chat box just to read what this character’s saying while literally everyone else around them gets voice lines. What gives?
86 Likes
He didn’t pay his Goblin Union dues so they took his larynx.
63 Likes
It would actually make sense for an operative in the field to communicate via signals and code rather than openly speaking.
Too bad that’s too clever for the story writers and Ockam’s razor dictates the simpler solution is to assume incompetence.
13 Likes
the voice actor is probably on strike
8 Likes
See now, I’d be on board with non-verbal communication, since they’ve even done that in the past. But since Renzik has ‘spoken’ lines that show up in chat and speech bubbles, that’s definitely not what they’re going for here.
We’ve got NPCs brand new in this patch that have fully custom voice lines, even on-click interactions, and this guy just got completely skipped over! He still has a default Cata goblin voice!
This is the sort of thing that really drives me bonkers, even while everyone else complains about things that actually matter like server crashes and broken mechanics. 
14 Likes
Especially because this character just had a short story released about them
8 Likes
I didn’t realize Ursula was part of that union. Huh.
16 Likes
Small indie company
8 Likes
Just make Renzik voiced by Mathias Shaw’s VA lol
7 Likes
shout out to my quasi intellectuals
2 Likes
Yes! It keeps throwing me off. Why is it that one-off side characters get voiced lines and yet Renzik “The Shiv” is completely silent? This can’t be intentional.
6 Likes
Blizz has like 5 voice actors that do everything, they busy mon.
3 Likes
Sounds like a company problem more than a community one.
3 Likes
Yeah i dunno, ppl pbbly need to buy more mounts coz blizz cant afford Renziks voice actor 
5 Likes
Was hoping for answers to this too. Long-time character from Vanilla like Gazlowe and it’s so weird hearing Gazlowe respond to someone that we can’t hear.
10 Likes
Xal’atath is getting to him already, soon he will be babbling about feet and tentacles…
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Because he’s a Rogue.
For real though, he never had a proper voice, no idea why.
They even gave us a short story where he talks, lol.
1 Like
SAG is on Strike from the Video Game Industry - Blizzard included.
Renzik is a SAG Voice Actor.
I don’t know WHY they chose to use him if he couldn’t be voiced though.
Blizzard only has 4 SAG affiliated Voice Actors as of 2022. (Not sure if they’ve added more) So it’s been rather easy for them to work around it.
So I don’t know why on earth they made Renzik such a big role in this patch if he can’t be voiced.
Also, the SAG Strike only affects new work. So for instance, even though Final Fantasy 14 has a lot of SAG actors - a lot of them were contracted through all of the current expansion, and as such, they are allowed to voice those characters through their contract.
However, as Renzik isn’t really used, and the only other character his voice actor voices that’s still relevant is Kiro. (he also voices the final boss of Freehold and Zanzil from Cata) So they likely don’t have him under contract for War Within.
9 Likes
I imagine it’s much more likely to be a bug. The SAG-AFTRA voice actor strike ended in November 2023 and all of the voicework in the game is SAG-AFTRA, so it wouldn’t just be one character.
2 Likes