What’s the most timeless thing in World of Warcraft?

The existence of WoW Classic has me thinking about what’s changed and what hasn’t since 2004 when World of Warcraft came out. There have been a lot of rule changes, class changes, and ability changes —  Sunder Armor, for example, has come and gone. The world itself was heavily altered by the Cataclysm revamp, with some dungeons being chopped up into smaller bits or even seeing whole new boss fights/encounters. Some dungeons eventually got completely revised, like Scarlet Monastery or Scholomance.

But there are still things that have remained since the beginning. Warriors are still tank/DPS hybrids — the way they go about it has changed over the years, but they’re still doing the same basic job they did all those years ago. The game’s UI has remained remarkably faithful over the years — it’s certainly not identical to the way it was at launch, but it’s also not really all that different, either. If you could figure out how to use it back in 2004 then you’ll likely not have a terribly hard time doing so today.

But to be honest, it’s hard for me to think of anything from Vanilla that’s stayed truly faithful to what it was back then. I can’t think of a single dungeon that hasn’t seen at least a little change — Shadowfang Keep is heavily changed, Sunken Temple had whole sections of it removed, Scholomance was streamlined, Upper Blackrock Spire was totally revised for Warlords of Draenor. Heck, we even lost Nethergarde Keep with the opening of that expansion.  So I turn to you, my friends and fellow players — what do you think of as unchanging, or close to it, in World of Warcraft? Is it the Horde/Alliance conflict? Your favorite item set? Is there anything you see as the bedrock of the game, something that has never — and will never — be changed or altered, or is it all up for grabs?