The older I get, the more I appreciate 3.0

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Well Random Bystander, your name is perfect. I'm going to use your post as the "everyman" quote concerning 3e's need for simple fixes.

The truth is that small changes are good. Monte's main point is that 3.5's changes weren't done in a change-log format (like DotA). Thus the 3.5 changes should have detailed a section listing 100% of the changes from 3e to 3.5 so that a player could be confident he didn't need to look for any other sneaky changes after just a few minutes of reading.

He was right though that people were going to still use the 3.0 XP, weapon handedness, and (tall) vs (long) area sizes as occasional variants.

 

[Tony Vargas]

3.5 took everything that was wrong with 3.0 and broke it.

A pithy summation.

Weapon sizes make more sense and are less complicated to deal with. Wait, is that a small greatsword?, or a medium longsword?

Nod. It was a little thing, but I liked how in 3.0 a dagger made for a medium creature was simply like a shortsword to small creature, while in 3.5, Bilbo would have been taking a penalty to use Sting.

Damage Resistance- the numbers are high-probably too high in many cases, BUT it eliminates a big chunk of the "golfbag full of weapons" issue with 3.5 and PF.

I didn't really hate the golf-bag of weapon in 3.5, but sure.

In retrospect, I look more fondly back at 3.0

Another thing I liked about 3.0 was a few of the spells, particularly stat-boosting ones. They had a much longer duration, making it a no-brainer to buff the Fighter's STR and the Rogue's DEX more often than not. They were also random rather than +4, which was just one more tiny little thing that made having an odd stat not totally meaningless. But, most of all, they only covered the physical stats. It seemed like they were OP spells, and they were, but they were power that flowed from the casters who had a surfeit, to the non-casters who desperately needed it. Much like healing.
Once 3.5 added spell-casting-stat buffs and shortened the durations, casters stopped 'wasting' slots on everyone else and started dedicating their level 2 slots to self-buffing their caster stat.

Similarly, though 3.0 did have the WoCLW, it seemed like it was overlooked until 3.5...

 

[JeffB]

Apparently 3.0 Resurrection still works fine!