Yes, I'm reviving an old post. Transmission started acting up, mainly slow to shift up, especially when cold. Changed fluid and filter, and shifts fine now
. '98 ML320 with almost 123K on the clock. Fluid didn't look terribly bad, but did have some small metallic bits in it.
Do what you want with yours, but I'll be changing mine again at around 220K. I'm sure the engineers feel confident it doesn't need changing, if they took the torque converter drain out of the later models. A LOT of oil came out of the converter. Either that or they wanted to make a thorough fluid change a really expensive job!