I'm returning. I stopped playing in the late 90's after playing 2e through most of high school, and just a bit in college. I rolled up a 3e character once but never played, and stopped paying attention around the time 3e came out.
Last year a couple of friends wanted to try playing D&D, and so I looked into the possibilities. Learned about all the business with 3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 4e ... seemed like a complicated mess and a ton of variation in opinions with few people being unbaised enough to provide me with an objective view on what to try. Ultimately, given my friends' uncertainty about RPG's and my knowledge that some of them would not want to deal with complicated rule sets, I went with 5e. (Actually, on another friend's advice, I mentioned Pathfinder. To which, the response was "what's that? We want to play D&D". No explanation could shake them of wanting to play the game called D&D as opposed to something similar (and according to some, better. I'd also mentioned FATE, Dungeon World, and the SoIaF RPG).
Okay, the fact that the playtest was *free* was also a huge influence.
We never looked back. We've been playing as often as possible (which really means once or twice a month) for the past year and four (or so) months. Two of us have bought all the books. Most of us at this point have some understanding of the various systems, due to listening to a variety of podcasts and other subculture references. I'm very happy to say all the games are equally good in their own way. However, we are very happy with our decision to stick with 5e. It's a great game. It's great for people who are learning, and great for people who are returning. It's great for a quick get-together, and it's great for a campaign.