Things to expect in the next patch : World of Warcraft General Discussions

Hunter Class
Gnomish and Goblin Engineering
Ungoro Crater (48-55 Zone)
Felwood (48-55 Zone)
Burning Steppes (50-58 Zone)
Blackrock Depths (48-56 Dungeon)
Rogue Talents
Priest Talents
Auction House Improvements
Deathstalker Vincent is finally laid to rest

In the next push, you will be able to mark global variables which are saved and loaded. You can save both normal variables and tables of variables. This is designed to provide large-scale persistent storage for UI add-ons. CVars will continue to be available for global configuration options, but this is the recommended way to store persistent data.

For example:
RegisterForSave("myVariable");
The value of myVariable will be saved and then loaded the next time the game starts.

Since the variables are loaded after the entire UI is loaded, and all OnLoad() event handlers are run, there is a new event "VARIABLES_LOADED" which is sent after the variables are loaded. The variables are in the global namespace and override any existing values that are initialized in the lua files at startup.