Hi Tuame,
Good to see you back in cow again.
Alot has happened.. You can read all the news in the Daily Cow. (You can publish you own news articles to it too)
I think the most interesting change in cow is the ability to lock objects with other objects. read the info about locking and unlocking
Another interesting change is all players can script objects - a cut-down verison of code. And CowScript has simpler, more intuitive way of triggering a reaction. read the scripting introduction.
find the info and find the lesson for other facinating stuff.
As for cow reverting back to its 'original state' Im not sure what you mean.. but this is the most current version of cow with pinging, rss feeds and ajax interfaces and all that fun stuff.
See you sometime soon I hope.