Hope of Ghirapur is a neat little addition, allowing you to potentially lock one player out of noncreature spells for as long as you want
Flying and lifelink help it survive combat while ward makes it harder to remove
Card game creators want to release exciting new cards that will make people buy packs, so they often make the newer cards more powerful
After all, since the precons are designed around them, its not surprising that these cards look exciting
What if we printed a slower Birthing Pod that counts colors and you get to cast them from Exile instead of making them enter for free sounds like just the right amount of hoops to jump through to make the card not an auto include in every deck
Urza, Lord High Artificer, one of the best artifact commanders, is a blue card that loves artifacts, so you know it's broken