Look, it's our 25th Anniversary and the return of the core set. You could excuse us for getting a little excited. So excited, in fact, that we're moving the release date of Core Set 2019 up a week to July 13, 2018. It was previously announced as July 20, 2018.
That moves up many of the previously announced dates for Core Set 2019 as well. The new dates are as follows:
Open House: June 30–July 1, 2018
Prerelease Weekend: July 7–8, 2018
Draft Weekend: July 14–15, 2018
Magic Online Launch: July 9, 2018
On Sale in Magic Online: July 13, 2018
I bet it has something to do with marketing like a competing game like Hearthstone shouldn’t get in their way. (Just an uneducated guess)
Timing does seem to be the real reason here. I don't think that Hearthstone, or any other competitor, is the main reason here, given that most of the game's current issues are internal rather than external. The two games are marketed to slightly different audiences, anyways. My guess would be San Diego Comic-Con, which is supposed to occur on the original release weekend. I've always found set release timing relative to the convention to be poor (i.e. same week), and having the set come out a week prior allows them to market the new cards harder at the convention.
Timing does seem to be the real reason here. I don't think that Hearthstone, or any other competitor, is the main reason here, given that most of the game's current issues are internal rather than external. The two games are marketed to slightly different audiences, anyways. My guess would be San Diego Comic-Con, which is supposed to occur on the original release weekend. I've always found set release timing relative to the convention to be poor (i.e. same week), and having the set come out a week prior allows them to market the new cards harder at the convention.
The reason is that they lied when they announced the release of Core 2019, and the real release date was always July 13 the whole time.
Uh huh!
This is probably surprisingly true in spirit; I'd bet Wizards of the Coast employees had to work with the earlier deadline in mind.