I might be missing the question - are you asking if the point of the tests was to check that it would work when we upgrade a version of NodeJS?

The point of our tests was to document a requirement we had - in this case, how some data sorted. That test was able to eliminate questions of the "how" - whether the sort was done in our database layer or our NodeJS layer - and let us focus on the important outcome: are the things sorted in the right way?

We didn't write them because of the NodeJS 12 upgrade. We wrote them 5 years ago. We added them because writing them captured a requirement. And when an unexpected reason caused that functionality to break, we avoided shipping a bug in our software.

Regression tests are certainly useful, and every time we ship a bug, we attempt to write an automated regression test. But I wouldn't argue they're one of the most useful - equally useful is any test that captures a requirement.