What do you think the pirate flag for patch 10.2.6 on the roadmap will be?

Not too long ago, the World of Warcraft team unveiled their roadmap for the year 2024, which can be seen on the picture above. But between the (sort of) recently released patch 10.2.5, Seeds of Renewal, and the still-yet-to-be-released Season 4, we see patch 10.2.6 depicted by nothing but a pirate flag — and absolutely no other info. This has, of course, been the cause of much speculation by the community at large. What could the pirate flag represent? What kind of content, exactly, is coming on patch 10.2.6?

The fires have been further stoked by the fact that several members of the WoW development team have been teasing the community with the pirate flag. But ever since November, in response to a tweet by content creators Taliesin and Evitel wondering “what the devs didn’t mention at BlizzCon,” many of those same members of the WoW team have been cryptically hinting that there might be more to come. It’s true that whatever feature the devs are teasing there might not have anything to do with the pirate flag — but either way, the community is expecting something that wasn’t announced at BlizzCon (but apparently exists), and it’s not totally out there to link that to whatever “mystery content” the pirate flag denotes.

Some players think this is related to the pirates that can be found in the Forbidden Reach zone, thinking that this new content might expand on whatever is happening over there — perhaps even with some ties to future events from the upcoming The War Within expansion. Others think it could be more of a gameplay system: the Hardcore character system from WoW Classic proved very popular, so perhaps something similar could be brought to Dragonflight? And some of the more out there players have even imagined a major new feature, such as giving players the ability to commandeer a ship that they could customize and sail around. Too much? (Yes, probably.)

What do you think? What are your theories about what the pirate flag from patch 10.2.6 represents? New story content? New systems? Do you think it’s linked to whatever “hidden” new feature the developers have been teasing since November? Do you think it’s something that will tie us into the next expansion?