I was talking with a friend the other day about how much has changed in Patch 2.1.0 and that led to a discussion on what has changed in World of Warcraft since I started playing the game. I began my introduction to WoW in February 2005.

My first character was a warlock, Arianwenn the rain chaser. Since I was coming to the game with a role play background, I imagined my character traveling the world searching for the next thunderstorm. To my amazement, there was no weather in the game, every day was the same as the day before. Every time you sent a piece of mail, you had to manually fill in the subject. Quest tracking was unheard of.

A few weeks later Patch 1.3 was introduced, and with it the jungle temple of Dire Maul. Everyone was abuzz about the upcoming battlegrounds, which would include a PvP ranking system. Those players progressed enough to enter Molten Core had to do so through BRD; attunement was yet to be added.

Reading through the previous patch notes is like stepping back in time. I can remember the introduction of the Gurubashi Arena, when we first saw the World Dragons, when we all gathered materials for the opening of Ahn Quiraj. Heck, I remember the collective sigh of joy when the flightpoint to Chillwind Camp was introduced.

When I look back on the changes in the game, I can see a correlation to the ephemeral nature of the real world. Things always change, only in Azeroth there is a continual progress toward improvement, and that can't be said of the outside world.