d30 Challenge: Favorite Edition

I know I started out with BECMI, played 2nd Edition for years, and I'm currently loving ACKS, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say 3.5 was my favorite edition. Why? Because 3.5 is why I'm playing D&D today. I played 2nd Edition all through high school, but I barely played any D&D at all in college. I'm not sure why -- certainly most of my gaming group was still in the area. I think on the one hand, the Skills & Powers type books ("2.5") turned me off of the game, and on the other, I was just playing more board games. I wonder what the guys I knew back then would say.

But a few years into grad school, I was talking with a friend of mine who mentioned that he had been hearing great things about 3.5. Apparently, it was a streamlined and rationalized game, much better than the old clunky systems we played in our youth. In a fortuitous coincidence, I was going to be back in Grand Rapids for the summer, and a fellow grad student was going to be there as well, willing to DM for us. James the Lesser was born, and we enjoyed ourselves greatly. I never really found a gaming group in South Bend, but when I got to law school, I found a thriving Living Greyhawk community in and around St. Louis, as well as a number of fellow law students to play with, and I haven't looked back since.