You’re playing a competitive activity. It doesn’t matter what it is, a sport, a video game or a board game. There’s a ranking system that groups players or teams together. This system is largely responsible for keeping the activity competitive by moving opponents between ranks depending on performance. Naturally, there can only be a relative handful of people at the top of the foodchain. After all, there can only be one champion.
To me this is simply logical. Maybe I’ve setup too many tournaments and coached too many softballs teams in my life, because it is odd that Blizzard felt the need to do an entire blog post on the topic. Perhaps, like with the chosen title, the developer wanted to fluff up your opinion of deck-building and card-playing skills. Breaking Rank 20 is feel good what with securing a seasonal card back and all. You still reside with over 75% of the community. You’ll need to break below Rank 15 to enter into any area of a postseason run.
I knew when I began my Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft career that I stunk. There’s video evidence of this on the Twitch channel. Now with over 100 wins under my belt, an understanding of most of the cards and many common strategies I feel far more competent. Ideally, additional packs and experience will enable me to bust into the top quartile of players. Once that’s secure I think I will put “Top 5,000,000 Hearthstone player” on my resume.