The character customization is whats keeping me away. I generally have finely detailed characters with a certain thing that sort of defines them in my mind, which is where I start role playing them. Just seems harder at this point to have that level of detail.

I am sure they will print another 3000 books and there will be some of it. But yeah, I was pretty happy with third / third and a half. After so many years, my DM had quick reference for all kinds of monsters / villians, which was our only complaint: how long it took to figure out beaties and such and make their stats. We solved it by kicking out rukles lawyers, and if a paticular ogre was really strong, well, the DM said he was and he would hit harder no matter what the rules were (without the DM having to look up 800 feats and figure out how the ogre could get them).

Our Rogue never did anything but the at-will Riposte Strike and did ok the entire campaign (levels 1-16). Our ranger got tired of being a one-trick pony at low levels doing his archery stuff and multi-classed into cleric to get some variety. Wizard and Warlord were by far the most tactical, while all the strikers and defenders just had nice stuff in the right situations.

Almost everyone in our gaming group dm's so we take turns with different campaigns, about 50% is 4ed and its nice, the other half is 3.5 or CoC. The character builder helped a lot for a first game to start quickly especially if you want to start over 1st level and with gear. Also, the difference between levels is smoothed out so if you want to punish players for not coming and dock xp they won't hurt as much as 3.5. My favorite part is the 1-hit point Minions, which i've used for decades, but now they have a name!

As we finished out the games this month, we'll start two new 4ed campaigns and one 3.5, but this time with tome of battle and tome of magic, so it's more like 3.9... the tomes really are the best of both editions.

2e was fun, i played it all through junior high and high school. when 3e came out i had pretty much stopped playing, but i picked it up again and realized that all of my integral complaints about 2e were addressed- no clunky non weapon proficiency system? increasing core attributes? class levels for monsters? it was great.