If so... meh?
blue....but I hear yah!
I agree - presumably any other setting book would be next year, hopefully in the first half (which during that span this year there was a dearth of books). Would it being released early next year be that much of a disappointment? I know I have enough to spend on D&D this year, even without this book...
Gideon gets some of my ire here too.
On paper, nothing.
In practice, it's marketing to a theoretical audience. It's releasing a product not for your actual fans, but fans who might exist.
The book is gambling that MtG fans want this book and will be swayed by it buy said book and then play D&D.
It also assumes that large numbers of MtG fans are somehow unaware of D&D. Which seems unlikely. And that they will have both the free time and money to invest in D&D over MtG.
More likely the money for this book will have to come at the expense of MtG cards as the player chooses which to spend their disposable income on OR will not play D&D because they're spending their limited free time playing MtG.
Very likely, this is the sole hardcover setting book we will get for 5e.
They've also referenced Curse of Strahd as the model.
So at most I'm expecting a 30-page PDF that is mostly an introductory adventure with very limited new crunch, followed by opening up the DMsGuild and letting the fans do it. At very likely just the latter with the Guild and fans doing the work.
Which is okay, but hasn't exactly resulted in a whole lot of support for the setting or really introduced the setting to new fans as the vast, vast majority of D&D players don't visit the Guild.
What happens in 2019 is still unknown. But everything for 2018 has now been announced.
It's not that we don't want something new, it's that we don't want MtG in our D&D.
And technically it's not a new setting, since it already exists in MtG, it's just "new" to D&D.
How about something actually new and original?