This is an easy Morphling for me, it was the coolest creature I recall ever seeing when it came out. The art is fantastic on the card and it was the inspiration for so many other creatures.
I have to give a honorable mention to a close runner up in Deranged Hermit though. He is "the" token creator and always will be.
If Force of Will was legal in modern they could easily let these combo decks stick around more.
I have a strong feeling I will have to deal with a judge ruling on this at least once.
Meanwhile if you were to make a devoid Opportunity it really doesn't impact the card much.
Right now standard has a shock variant called Wild Slash and it has a form of lightning strike type card in Draconic Roar. They don't need to throw out a shock and lightning strike variant in every ******* set to prove that they think it's fine in standard.
Lol, that's like refusing to buy a Mercedes Benz due to the ridiculous price and opting for a BMW, I have seen how expensive Warhammer can get. A huge factor people are also neglecting here is this is not just tossing money down a well, sure you will end up in quite a few cases paying more than you get back once you sell everything. But compared to something like paying 2000 dollars for golf clubs that are worth like 400 bucks 2 years after you get them with moderate use, the money lost on magic cards pales in comparison.
Anyways on topic solid card is good, dissipate was nice to have in standard so having the option for this one is nice.
In all seriousness with some of the crazy things colorless mana does in this format I think this card is fine, people will take them in draft because it looks like most decks in limited will have at least SOME minor use for colorless mana. I also think you are vastly overthinking about why this card is a 0/1 maybe in limited playtest they had to reduce its power to 0 for some reason. I really doubt this card is a part of Maro's master plan to make more cards than ever get thrown away.
Eventually standard will get cheaper once Khans rotates out and probably cheaper still once Magic Origins rotates out. Remember kids if no one was buying cards from <insert card shop name here> at the prices they use they would probably start reducing prices.The fact of the matter is this game is basically the best CCG and therefore people play it and value the cards in it, thus why things cost a good chunk of cash.
I also want to point out you can use piles of 8 and still count the cards to make sure there are 60 or 40. I pile shuffle into piles of 8 and with a 60 card deck it ends in 4 more cards in the top 4 piles and with a 40 card deck it even outs completely.