my firsst question is: what is so much better in third edition than second that so many folks play that?
i used to play second edition ad&d and started DMing just a short while ago and moved my campaign to sigil because i liked the concept and freedom of the planes. however i have very limited sourcebooks on the planes and even more limited funds. so any one knows a place to get freebie sourcebooks on the planes?
please reply
In answer to your first question, Third Edition is simply a lot more logical than Second Edition. Some argue that it spends too much time coming up with rules to cover any conceivable situation, but the bottom line is that 3e has meticulously comprehensive rules. In addition, the Open-Game License allows other companies to produce compatible game content, which widens popularity. But the main reason that Third Edition works better is that it simply more streamlined and refined. You can make monsters into characters, add levels to them, customize your character's abilities more than ever before, and you never have to deal with those crazy little things that came up. Things like: "What the heck exactly qualifies as a bend bars/ lift gates roll?", "What's the strength score of a troll?", "What magic items can I have if I start off as a level 6 character?", "Can I read with infravision?", or "Why does my thief have the same chance of hiding from a pissed off elder wyrm as I do of hiding from the village idiot?"
emm, ok i get what youre saying, but i dont really agree with it too much. ok i know that 3rd ed. has refined some rules and some of them were kind of nice too and logical. however they solved many problems that to me and my party were problems just once then we resollved them quick and easy for good, (like the 3e guys did )
but the system in itself is way too many rules for me and there are some consepts i didnt like too much. i liked the 3e spells in the PH a lot less and all in all i think that with the players option books the second edition is just as good as the third in terms of rulemaking. maybe its just me, but when i went through the 3e books i thought they changed some nice ideas just for the heck of it.
and no you cant read with infravision! why did they call it darkvision? one of the good ideas is the str scores for monsters i liked that. but all in all 2e is better !
once when we were playing we didnt have the 2e PH but the 3e one. so when my players used spells that we couldnt remember the details off they checked them from the 3e book so it created some very nice quirks like that my paranoid mage only slept and rested in his ropetrick. which on 2e has a turn/level duration.(not an hour/level). needless to say that once we got the 2e PH back he woke up from hitting the floor near a few dozen nasty buggers.
ah good times.
Sam, it really is a philosphical deabate... I miss 1.0 and 2.0, but 3.0 and 3.5 are more powerful and intricate. I must admit that when my son and I first got the 3.0 stuff, it sat on my book shelve for almost twelve months until we even tried it! What got us to try it was the realization that anything new coming out would be in 3.0 only! And the second point that got us going was what both you and Rhys touched on... The planes are infinite and diverse (that why I've run planar adventures for over 20 years now), and the d20 system is flexible enough to merge games together... For example, our core D&D characters have at times encountered Star Wars stuff, and been involved in WWII battles as well (the D-Day adventure was a classic! U.S. Rangers versus a fully equipped Marilith! Tasty!). I still have one group I DM for who insist on 2.0 and will not convert. Their reasons, which I respect, is that they have so much 2.0 stuff, know it so well, and play so infrequently (2 or 3 times a year!) that they don't want to go to 3.0... So I accomodate and do both. And one final thought... Right now, I think there is far more free planes related stuff on the web in 2.0 format than 3.0, however, as I said, 2.0 is effectively dead for new material. So I think 3.0 will catch up and leave 2.0 behind soon... Just my thoughts... 
I think it's easily caught up already, if you count all the third-party d20 stuff. I've still got a lot more oD&D, 1st edition, and 2nd edition material, but only because I don't buy nearly as many RPG books and magazines as I once did.
As for Planescape stuff on the web, most of the 2nd edition monsters and factions have been converted somewhere; on message boards, at planewalker.com, or elsewhere. And the best of Planescape was always the flavor text and doesn't need conversion.
As a system, I think 3.0/3.5 leaves 2nd edition AD&D in the dust, and I say that as someone who loved 2nd AD&D despite its many quirks. The key distinction, for me, is that homebrewing in 2nd edition worked on a somewhat idiosyncratic basis (so that hacking multi-person combat, for example, worked differently depending on who were you playing with; likewise for proficiencies), while 3.x is sufficiently complete and sufficiently modular that there's a natural, logical way to extend the rules into almost any conceivable situation. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than what we had.
And Rip/Kaelyn's exactly right when he says
Speaking as a fluffer, not a cruncher -- and wow, does that sound wrong -- amen to that, brothah. 
Yes, the 2e material had lots and lots of wonderful flavor and the new editions don't have half of it.
As for the rules, i never played 2e, but i love 3e for it's simplicity. You just stack any levels on any race and you can even buy skills that your class doesn't support. In other words, if i want to make a slaad barbarian/wizard with lockpicking and tumble skills, i can do it without much trouble
Well, they're not free, but RPGNow.com has pretty much every planescape sourcebook ever in pdf form for about $5 a pop. I'd say start raking leaves while the getting's good and download a few.