I appreciate your view but isn't that a bit of an exaggeration?
Since this is a subjective question I have no real way to answer that question except to say that it doesn't feel like an exaggeration to me. Both Basic and Second Edition were rules light variants of D&D, and they shared quite a bit in common in terms of their approach to combat resolution as much of the complexities of combat disappeared in both. If you didn't look at your character sheet, you'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart from the game play.
To me a better comp would be the difference between 1E and 2E.
You can make that as a valid comparison, but in my opinion 1E as it was played and 2E are probably even closer together than 3E and 3.5E. Since most people didn't track combat by segments, didn't have simultaneously declaration, didn't use weapon vs. AC modifiers, training times, used a simplified initiative system similar to basic or 2E and so forth. Anyone moving between 1E and 2E would probably not notice that they'd changed games unless their DM was a real stickler for the rules as written. All of this is true of changing between 3E and 3.5E as well, but generally when I stumbled over one of the changes between 3.0 and 3.5 it was a much bigger, "What the hey?" moment than the changes between 1E and 2E. At least I kinda knew where the main changes were in 2E. My group ended up sticking to 1E for character creation, combat resolution, and the like, and treated 2E about like supplements from Dragon. We got the 2E Bard and 2E dragons, and liked the expanded 2E lists of NWP's. But many of the changes - like dropping the half-orc and the assassin from the initial text - seemed less like changes than simply a different set of player options for the same game.
So at the least, 3E and 3.5E are as different from each other as 1E and 2E, but to me the pervasive and often random changes in the details of just about everything was jarring. It was often not easy to realize just how much had changed until it came up in gameplay, and then there would be this, "Huh?", moment from both parties. Monsters were as different the basic and 2E write ups of the same creature. Spells were as different as the basic and 2E write ups of the same spell. Feats were different. Zero level characters were just gone. Many of the changes were subtle and they tried to pass it off as something as minor as including some errata in a reprint, but it struck me once I had a chance to take it in as a big big change not just mechanically but in tone and emphasis.
But the reason I separated 1E and 2E and not 3E and 3.5E is that the latter are less distinctly different in terms of aesthetics and overall feeling.
Again, I'm not sure that I agree. While some of the changes in mindset that 3.5E brought along were apparant even in early 3.0E splatbooks like 'Sword and Fist', the era of the 'Complete' books was very different than what 3.XE had looked like when it was just the three core books. Numbers were made bigger and power creep was embraced as a good thing. Player empowerment was made the be all end all of the game (previewing the mindset of 4e), and the character creation subgame was made the driving force of if not the game then at least of the brand's business decisions. It really opened up the era where 3-4 classes were consider 'normal' for a character and where extreme character optimization was assumed as part of the CR/ECL balancing. Rules bloat was tremendous. Most of the 3.0e supplements were setting supplements either of specific settings or of the D&D generic setting with its assumed planes and cosmology. Most of the 3.5e supplements were player centered options and rules expansionis. It was a huge step away from the game as Monte Cook had presented it, and a huge step away from the 1e spirit that I felt had animated the 3e system.
But again, it is a judgement call. Not splitting 3E and 3.5 is the only one that I hesitated on - I actually originally put it in but decided to combine them so as to recognize that they are, in the end, one edition, just like 2E and Players Options, or the BECMI boxes and Rules Cyclopedia. I wanted to be consistent with how I divided editions; if I had separated 3E and 3.5 out, I probably would have had to separate other editions.
I feel that of all the splits you didn't make, 3.0E and 3.5E is the most glaring. 2E with Players Options probably is different enough to be considered its own edition as well, but never was really supported enough to make the distinction meaningful except for the very few tables that adopted it as their primary game. To me, it would be like listing 'Masque of the Red Death' or similarly different from default settings as their own edition of the game and I think its sufficient to have an 'Other' option for cases like that. But again, judgement call.
