I started out my fantasy passion with Eddings - read through the Belgariad in High school, then the Mallorean and the Elenium when it came out.
Then I moved on to Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, which was a brilliant series.
I detested Stephen Donaldson's Covenant books - they were waaaayyy too overdescriptive and just frustrated the hell out of me (but of course, I had to read them all, just to see how it all panned out )
Fiest's Riftwar saga was great, and I would recommend them to anyone.
David Gemmel seems to follow a fixed pattern, as does Brook's Shannara series, so I have only read a couple of each of theirs.
I started Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, but they also frustrated me - too many characters and too long between books, so I gave that series up after the third book.
I agree that Robin Hobb's books are fantastic - I would happily re-read them, but I found the first Sara Douglas trilogy too bittersweet to attempt the second one.
Terry Pratchet books are great for their humour - I haven't read all of his books, but the half-dozen or so that I have read have all been good. I've even listened to a few audio books from his series, and they are all enjoyable
I've read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings a couple of times each. I had The Hobbit sitting around at home when I was younger and I tried to start reading it about 4 or 5 times before I finally got stuck into, then it was a natural progression to churn through the rest.
A fantasy series I would recommend for younger readers would be the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix - I haven't read the last book, but the first two have been really good.
The last 'fantasy' series I read was Stephen King's The Dark Tower, and I found that it was a great read.
I'll have to go and look through my book cupboard to refresh my memory - I'm sure there are more than a few that I have missed out, but that all I remember for now.

Cheers,
Marc.