What makes you think it was ever different? This is how it worked in Windows XP (the earliest version I could test easily) and this is how it still works. I'd like to claim that this is just the first time that you've acutely noticed it. The vertical scroll position is simply a state that is not stored in the history, but derived by scrolling down from the top of the view to the item that was selected. Arguably, your expectation may be biased by how web browsers typically store the scroll position in the history state nowadays.
While not a direct solution to your problem I'd like to suggest something that I like to do, sorting by date instead of name. This at least makes it more likely that relevant (recently modified) files and folders are at the top.