Oh, 3rd Edition. The edition that brought me back to the game.
When Wizards of the Coast bought D&D in the late 90s, I was worried. I was concerned that they would make so many changes to it that it would become an unrecognizable, unplayable mess. I was envisioning a collectible card game, like some weird "Magic: The Dungeoning" offshoot. Or an endless series of tabletop boardgames like the ones that had been floated by TSR and never caught on. Either way, I didn't want it.
By the 90s, I had resigned myself to play my beloved BECM forever, and I wasn't really looking for a new edition of the game. I'd play the occasional D&D game with my friends, but they were all playing 2nd Edition AD&D and I didn't care for it. So I really wasn't much of a "hobby gamer" like I had been in the late 80s. By the time the new millennium arrived, it had been years since I had played a game.
And then I saw the new 3rd Edition Player's Handbook on the shelf at "Poor Richard's," a bookstore in Colorado Springs. It was quite by accident: I think I was there to pick up a Harry Potter book or something, I don't remember, but whatever it was they didn't have it. So I did what I normally do in a used bookstore, I walked over to the Fantasy/RPG section and looked around for some classic D&D modules. And there it was, a shiny new hardcover called, simply, "Dungeons and Dragons." I'll be honest, it was the lack of the word "Advanced" that made me pick it up. If it had the A-word on the cover I would have recoiled with a hiss, like a vampire presented with garlic. But without that A-word, I could let myself believe (even if it was just for a moment) that it was a return to, or maybe a reprint of, my favorite system.
I flipped it open and the first page I saw was the class description of the Druid. I spent 10 minutes reading it, and then purchased the whole book. I read it cover-to-cover, and a few weeks later I had put a small adventure together for my roommate and a couple of our friends. (The earliest versions of the 3E PHB had a tiny section at the end with monsters, DM tips, and such, enough to build a small dungeon or something.) And 4 hours later, we were completely hooked.
We played 3rd Edition exclusively until 3.5E came out, and then we bought all-new books and played that version exclusively until 4th Edition came out. We played one game of 4E but didn't care for it, so we switched to Pathfinder instead so that we could continue playing the 3.5E rules set with fresh material. So while BECMI is my favorite edition, I've played 3.X the most (from 2000 to 2015). It's a robust, highly-detailed, highly-customizable game system with tons of content and a thriving online community--what's not to love?