"Hearthstone" director Ben Brode clarified that the nerf to the Fiery War Axe is not meant to demean players. Instead, he said it will help players who have already memorized cards.

Earlier this week Blizzard announced that the Fiery War Axe will now cost one mana higher, bringing its cost to three. The update also brought more changes to the game. Innervate now gives players a single mana, Hex now costs four mana, Spreading Plague now costs six mana, and the Murloc Warleader can give other Murlocs additional two stat points for Attack.

Players, however, were not happy with some of the changes, and they even criticized the reasoning provided.

"Generally, changing the mana cost of a card is less disruptive, because you can always see the mana cost of cards in your hand," the developer's note on the Fiery War Axe read.

Brode, however, clarified the statement and said that it was not their intention to make it look like the players are stupid.

"These cards are being nerfed for power level reasons, or because we are curating the set of evergreen cards to help Standard feel fresh and more fun with our yearly standard rotation. The language about certain changes being more disruptive than others was related to why we decided to make one change over another, once we'd already decided to make a change," Brode told GamesBeat.

"Hearthstone" is an online collectible card video game based on the "Warcraft" series. It was released in 2014 for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and it has support for iOS and Android devices. It allows players on any device to compete with each other with geographical limits.

It was met with positive reviews, with a lot of reviewers praising the game for its simplicity, gameplay pace and attention to detail.

The title also won several awards, including the best mobile/handheld game at The Game Awards in 2014, GameSpot's 2014 mobile game of the year, and GameTrailers' 2014 multiplayer game of the year and best overall game of the year.