There was no miscommunication internally, just an opinion that changed as feedback continued to roll in from various sources. Discussion surrounding Death Knights in Arena started to come in a couple weeks after KoFT was released. In short, a number of players felt that Death Knight cards were so powerful that when they were played, it gave their opponent an advantage that was extremely difficult to overcome. Instead of games feeling like they were won and lost due to how they built or played a deck, to those players games felt decided by whether or not they were able to draft a Death Knight card.

Our first step was to check data. By checking to see how accurate player perception is in data, it can help you determine how likely that perception is to continue. If players are upset with a card and it has a 65% win rate, it's likely players are still going to be upset about that card a week from now. Similarly, if players are upset about the power level of a 50% win rate card, that perception is more likely to adjust itself over time. In the case of Death Knight cards, we knew the permanence of the hero powers can feel overwhelmingly powerful in some circumstances, but our data did not suggest they were power level outliers in any circumstance. We decided to leave them in (and communicate that we did not have plans to remove them) for combination of reasons, but namely the following. A: There will always be powerful cards in Arena, and it can be frustrating to lose to powerful cards that you didn't draft. This would not change by removing Death Knights. B: Death Knights are cool! They do a great job of making Arena feel different, and are fun to play when you do draft them. C: Player perception would likely adjust over time to more accurately represent their power level, which in most circumstances could be described as 'very good'.

So, why did we go back on that decision? In short, because of feedback from the community. This came from multiple sources including here on reddit, our official forums, our friends, and interacting with some of our most invested players at Blizzcon. Part of being a game developer is constantly evaluating decisions you've made in the past to make sure they are still the right decisions for the future. Ultimately, there was enough evidence that these cards led to poor experiences that we changed our initial stance on the subject. Thanks for the feedback!