You're right, but what I meant about Varian was more how they made him change. He just seems like the wisest and oldest man alive in the 5.1 story (a Little Patience comes to mind) and Blizzard made sure that the players recognised that. Also, the whole maturing process of Anduin wasn't dealt with at all (talking about ingame story now obviously). He went from playing detective to the leader of the army of the light.
Personally, I don't like it. It's not bad at all, I just don't like it. What IS bad about it though, is the fact how they handled the story ingame. Ingame storytelling was always bad but this time, where they tried to pack more story into the dailies and the quests in general, they blatantly failed imo. It's like there's not development at all, just pure "here's the story, that's how the characters are, deal with it".