I've been around for longer for most of you, but I've only been active on these boards recently.
When I first started running forums back in 2003 (back in the 2.0.4 days), I was really excited for what was then phpBB 2.2. Every now and then, I would download the CVS snapshots and have a look at how 2.0 was evolving into 2.2. Unfortunately, I then experienced Internet connectivity issues in 2004 and 2005 that let to me losing interest in the project, and the fact that development was taking excessive amounts of time didn't exactly help either.
However, back when Beta 1 came out, I started taking note of this project again, keeping a close eye on its development. Some watching in the background transformed into downloading one of the betas (Beta 2, I think it was), then when the converter was added I started doing test conversion runs of my two boards (and I found two or three bugs while I was at it, although time constraints kept me from doing more extensive bug testing (and besides, dark/Rain has that role pretty much covered)). This has now turned into subscribing to the CVS commit mailing list, and setting up a test CVS board for friends of mine to play around with and get used to the new features. Am I excited for the first stable (actually semi-stable) release? You bet.
Now, hopefully some of you (particularly those of you who haven't been here as long as some other people have) now realise why us older members are really excited over the RC1 release.
(By the way, where I'll go from here in terms of this community after phpBB 3 goes gold, I don't know. Hopefully, I'll have the time to stick around and watch phpBB 3 develop further.)
Life's a game. Just very badly programmed.