Its elegant design and strong synergy with modern decks increase its appeal
First, the ability to exile opposing creatures or your own is a versatile effect, and upon ETB means it's something white is well equipped to repeat
The Top 32 looked as follows: 9 ABC 7 Metalfoes 5 Paleozoics 3 Mermail 3 Heroes 2 Yang Zing/Metalfoes 2 Darklords 1 Blue-Eyes After 14 rounds of action suddenly Paleozoic stood out at the top, in the Top 4 the deck was represented twice while ABC and Metalfoes scored one slot each
That efficiency is what makes D.D
Since it has no other moves or abilities, it's utterly defenceless while it charges up, so even if you can manage to fire off Baneful Boom once, you're never going to be able to charge up a second one
References to the Shadow Realm are common with Bakura, Marik, and Arkana, as are threats like "Do you want to be gone from this existence? Pegasus says he no longer exists in his world, which is basically avoiding the fact that he is saying that he is already dead