6.2.2 Coming Sept. 1st

The (likely) final minor patch of Warlords now has an official release date.

6.2.2 is mainly notable as the Flying patch - finally, flight will be enabled in Draenor for those who have complete or have completed the Draenor Pathfinding achievement.

Draenor Pathfinding unlocks flight across the account in Draenor, and I believe extends to everyone from level 90 to 100 - the exception (and this is a guess, but a logical one) being those who are still doing the Tanaan/Dark Portal intro quests, as that phase of that area will presumably be a no-fly zone.

I understand the arguments against flight, but I think that Blizzard would be well-advised to make Legion's flying achievement achievable within the first patch. New zones added later could perhaps restrict flight, but one of the joys of WoW since BC (meaning the vast majority of the game's lifetime) has been hitting that level where you're high enough to fly (personally I thought Wrath did it the best, giving it to you in the middle of the leveling process right as you got high enough to go to two zones that required flight.)

But while the long-awaited flight feature is finally coming, 6.2.2 is also bringing some other interesting features.

For PvPers, there will be a new thing called "mercenary mode," which will activate if there's a significant imbalance between the factions on Ashran. There will be some thinly-disguised NPCs of the other faction in the bases at Warspear and Stormshield who will allow you to fight for the other faction, getting an illusion to look like a member of one of their races. The hope is that this will help with queue times on imbalanced servers.

Likewise, mostly for PvP, several Horde racial abilities are getting buffed. Apparently they've fallen behind and the hardcore PvPers have been playing Alliance (once again, PvP feels like this other game that I know very little about. I've literally never done an Arena.)

Finally, there will be lots of new Timewalker rewards, including BoA reputation tokens and I believe a new currency that can be used to purchase cosmetic rewards like mounts and pets.

6.2.2 is, of course, a minor patch, but it's one of the bigger minor patches (practically on par with 6.1, though that says more about 6.1 than 6.2.2.)

From there, we'll be waiting for the Legion beta to begin. There has been no word of an Alpha yet (though I think the days of Friends and Family Alpha might be behind us, as these tended to be leakier than a submarine with screen doors,) but I'm sure that Blizzard wants to get the Beta out as soon as they can. They have said that the beta will be out this year, and the sooner it is, the better.

But once this patch is out, development can focus on Legion. We know that there will actually be a world-wide launch event this time - something we really haven't gotten since Cataclysm, so while the Legion beta is going on, they'll also be prepping the 7.0 patch (though I expect this won't happen until relatively later in the Beta process.)