Remember when ...

[ptolemy18]

Personally, I loved 3E from the beginning. At the time, I was getting back to D&D after a long absence and I liked all the changes like Skills and Feats and Prestige Classes because it made the game much more customizable and expanded the definition of what was possible using the D&D rules (i.e. running weird settings like Skull & Bones, Testament, African Adventures, etc.). It was much more well-put-together and logical than any previous edition of D&D I'd seen.

On the other hand, after being invested in 3E for 8 years, now I'm all suspicious of 4E. Apart from pure economic selfishness, 4E is kind of "going back to basics" so it'll be a while before the really weird variant settings start coming out, if they come out at all. Secondly, I still have too many unused 3E ideas to run... it's just like a cozy, worn-out old pair of shoes or something...

 

[ptolemy18]

2nd Ed was broken and not well loved. It was complicated to play, confusing and the splat books just made it worse. Then came Players' Option. 3e, on the other hand, is a generally stable, well loved and enjoyable game. There are bound to be far more people worried about lack of support for 3e than there were about 2nd ed.

Agreed, speaking just from my personal opinion. 2E is just this complicated, confused mess of tana'ari and ba'atezu in my mind, and I pretty much spent the whole period from 1986 to 2000 playing Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun and Vampire. (Ahh, olden days...) 1E is the "classic old-school D&D that's so retro it's almost cool." 3E is the D&D I find most playable.

 

[Erik Mona]

I remember being excited about all the things that 3.0 introduced that I felt brought the game closer to its classic roots and repaired some of the conceptual damage to the D&D brand that had been done in the Second Edition era.

Oh, you said complaints. Sorry.