Started with the BECMI boxed sets, moved to 2e when it came out; as a forever DM, originally I only bought the DMG, thinking I could make the game "advanced" only by buying that book...
I faced a revolt of my group when I suggested we migrate our campaign to 2e, where Elves could be Thieves!
Anyway...ran the hell out of it (Dragonlance and Ravenloft where our favoured settings, then Dark Sun and Birthright) till 1997 or so, when we started using the PO books (so many toys!)...and our campaign collapsed. I still dislike them (Skills and Powers in particular); so many good ideas, but the implementation left us cold. So much so, that when 3.0 came out in 2000 we embraced it immediately as it promised to be close to 2e+PO, but in a leaner and cleaner package. Overall, we felt 3.0 kept its promise; we kept playing it as we did 2e and BECMI (and kept using a lot of the material of the latter two), so all "optimisation" and munchkinisms and abuses to which the system was prone (as we discovered online later), never surfaced in our games. We also never, ever used any splats for 2e nor 3.0, beyond the setting specific materials.
We skipped 3.5 after trying it (too many needless changes over 3.0 that distanced it from 2e; paladins with pokemon mounts?!), then I moved abroad in 2006 and lost my historic group.
It's been hard to find another stable group, so I mostly skipped 4e, mostly skipped 5e, definitely skipping 5.5 now, fell in love with 13th Age (still hoping to run a full campaign) and ran a few DCC games.
1e has a special place on my bookshelf, as I only acquired the books in 2006, so with the awesome powers of hindsight and experience, I could fully appreciate its virtues without rose-tinted glasses. I would gladly run a campaign with the right group of people.
Now I am preparing a 3.0 Birthright campaign (bare-bones conversion of 2e material) for my kids (which I exposed mostly to BECMI with some forays into DCC and 5e.) If I had to choose a "forever game" now, it would probably be 3.0 (PHB, DMG, MM1/2 only).
