Game Change from Google for SEO 2012 I hear

Well it's all change from google now. Meta tags have been irrelivant for a while so im told, and now more has dropped off the calculations. Google has dropped lots of blog websites that have been used for SEO advantages, and thus dropped lots of people down on the search pages supposedly. Then I read somewhere or other. The New Word for SEO is Content . I imagen it a bit like an exam, you have to write an essay on a subject keeping it intresting, factual, descriptive, well written. So as you can guess, its out of my reach. but if you can write a good peice then you can rise in the rankings. Well thats my take on it.