8.2.5 will likley be the final patch for bfa, they've clearly given up on trying to salvage it and will save N'zoth for the next expansion, the setup for "all eyes will be opened" is also too big a setup for a .3 patch unless its sylvanas vs anduin and they wrap up the alliance/horde war for good.
I think they're releasing 8.2.5 as a final patch for BFA, and they will move onto 9.0 in order to make up for lost time "earlier" than usual possibly pushing it for a december/january release date in order to make up for BFA.
8.3 is possible but if one had to wait for 8.3 till january and people assume classic alone is gonna keep the ship sailing they are wrong, classic will die out within the next 2 months when people realize theres nothing to do they cant already do in retail.
Classic is a superficial bandaid to a bigger problem, they need to start releasing more frequent patches and stop caring if raiders need 77 days to get content done or not and just "make content" for other people, not just the raiding community.
I for one, would be fine with an "entire" patch with no new raid tier, a 4 hour long story with lots more voice acting/char development and a few mogs, maybe 1 new dungeon.
Episodic patches would be more interesting anyway, they'd make the game feel more alive and ongoing rather than "Everything is tied to the raid so we cant continue until the next raid is being made" infact, get rid of raiding/story association completley and make raiding its own thing, you'd benefit the game immensiely since the devs would be able to make raids side content rather than main content, giving them more development into the games story/lore and thus more persistant patches.
I for one would be fine having 9.9 before moving into 10.0 if it meant that all the patches had some depth and purpose to them, not just a raiding patch.
Example:
You could have 9.1 and 9.1.5 focus on a single raid in 9.1 followed by a QoL addition in 9.1.5 such as a new allied race, then 9.2 and 9.3 could be story related, releasing in intervals between the next patch, 9.4 could be a new raid, 9.4.5 being a new QoL feature, then 9.5 9.6 being more story agian and 9.7+9.7.5 being another raid, with 9.8 and 9.9 being patches designed to bridge the gaps between this expansion and the next.