#1 - June 14, 2013, 2 p.m.
I've come to realize from the games that the reason for this is that Silence is essentially too versatile. Essentially, it can be used in 3 very powerful ways:
1) It can remove annoying text from cards (such as Knife Juggler, +spell power, etc.)
2) It can remove pesky affixes, mainly Taunt, though in some cases things like Deathrattle as well.
3) It can remove attack/defense buffs from targets (for example, buffing with Armorsmith.
The result is that Silence is too powerful in that it is far too versatile, and in many cases is dispelling multiple of these effects from a target For example, someone powers up a 2/2 minion to a 7/7 Taunt, and silence essentially removes both the attack/health and the Taunt aspect of the card. Now, mind, this is something I personally abuse as well, but I think it leads to balance issues.
THE SUGGESTION: Split Silence into two difference keywords now: Silence and Purge. Essentially, Silence would be designed to remove gametext/affixes and Purge would be used to remove status increases. So for example, Silence would remove Taunt/Deathrattle/etc. from cards, and would also remove any gametext from them (essentially #1 and #2 in what I listed above).
Purge would remove any bonuses to attack and health. Depending on balancing issues, it could either remove attack/health effects on the target currently, or it could be a permanent thing where the card is permanently stuck with its printed stats.
An example of the difference of these comes in the example of Ethereal Arcanist, which gains +2/+2 at the end of each of your turns you have a secret out. Let's say Arcanist gets the buff 2 times so that he's at 7/7 now. If you Silence him, he stays 7/7 but loses his text, such that he will no longer gain further stats even if a Secret remains in play. If you Purge him (assuming we go for the weaker version of the balance issue I listed, which is just a one-time reset of stats), then he would go back to 3/3, but would continue to gain +2/+2 on further turns if secrets are out. Hopefully you can see the difference here; Silence makes him lose his gametext but not anything accrued from the text already, whereas Purge resets the stats but does not make him lose his game text.
---------------------------------------
BALANCING
This would allow slightly better balancing of Silence/Purge type cards since the effects would be a little less versatile, and in some cases, also a little weaker (if you were silencing a card which had both Purge and Silence type effects on it). This would also allow Silence/Purge cards to be a little stronger for their mana.
Now, keep in mind, this does not mean that you couldn't make cards that both Silence and Purge if that's the intention. For example, Spellbreaker is currently seeing little use due to its relatively high cost, but you could balance this by making him both Silence and Purge. If you wanted to do so, you could keep "strong" effects like Mass Dispel having both Silence and Purge on it, though in this case, you may want to either remove the card draw or add a little bit to the mana cost.
