A card for the Priest class from the new One Night in Karazhan adventure for Blizzard's digital trading card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has sparked massive outrage among players.
The card in focus is a 2-mana spell named Purify, which silences a friendly minion then has the player draw a card. That, my friends, is a terrible card.
Sure, there are some instances when Purify could be marginally useful. The spell can be targeted at Ancient Watcher, which is a 2-cost 4/5 minion that can't attack. A Purify on an Ancient Watcher will allow it to attack, but that would mean fitting into two cards into a deck that could have just run a Chillwind Yeti instead, which is a 4-cost 4/5 minion with no drawbacks.
The Hearthstone community has largely reacted negatively to the card, not just because of how bad it is but also because of the current state of the Priest class. Even the world's best Hearthstone players have found it difficult to make a successful Priest deck ever since the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion was released in the spring, which has led to requests for more powerful cards for the class to improve its power in relation to the other classes.
But instead, Blizzard releases a card such as Purify.
In addition, because Purify is in the common rarity, it will be popping up as an option more often in runs in Hearthstone's Arena mode. Every card counts when building the drafted decks in Arena, and having Purify as one of the three cards options for one of the deck's slots effectively reduces the options to two.
Ben Brode, the lead designer of Hearthstone, has uploaded a video to discuss Purify amid calls for gamers to have the card removed from One Night in Karazhan. According to Brode, the development team knows that the power level of Purify is low, but the team wanted to make cards with different power levels for a variety of reasons.
"I think we really misread the community sentiment going into this reveal," Brode admitted but added that he still believes the card is good for Hearthstone, though it could have been paired with more powerful Priest cards.
Brode, however, said that Blizzard will be monitoring the performance of Priest decks once One Night in Karazhan launches, with the class to be pushed in future sets. Blizzard will also be working on a new system for how often certain cards show up in Arena beyond their rarity, but in the meantime, Purify will be removed from the pool of cards for the game mode. This is not the first time that a card has been removed from Arena, but it is the first card to be pulled from the mode before it was launched due to feedback from players.
The mere existence of Purify, however, is a bad sign for the relationship between Blizzard and the players. While gamers should not expect all Hearthstone cards to be good ones, the fact that Purify passed through all the stages of development shows how disconnected the development team is with the player base. As mentioned, players have been requesting for a bump in power for the Priest class, but Blizzard is apparently deaf to the pulse of the community and goes ahead with adding Purify to One Night in Karazhan.
Hearthstone players should definitely hope that Purify becomes a learning experience for the game's developers, as the future of the title depends on the next cards that will be introduced in upcoming adventures and expansions.
