Huh... I'm in the minority. Being somewhat of a gamer, I'd heard of Dwarf Fortress before, and finally my curiosity got the better of me. So I installed it and started it up.
I was staring at letters. I was also dumbfounded. This is a game? No, surely I must be getting trolled. So I did some google searching. I found what I reluctantly accepted to be fact: this was a game. Sadly, I went back in. I figured out how to look around, found out how to dig, then I forgot how to look around and dug into a river (I thought it was precious gems or something). My dwarves died.
I looked around a bit more and found the LAZY NEWB PACK (insert angelic chorus here)
With fresh determination, I re-entered the game boldy. I was surprised that I was sitting on a flying island in the sky - there were huge areas labeled "empty space", and they were sky-colored. But, I accepted it and built my fortress deep into the mountainside. I was gathering wood, stone; I was building walls, a military... I got migrants, too. Then, suddenly, one year - a goblin attack. I closed my gates and locked my doors, confident that I would survive.
The goblins had climbed down the slopes of the mountain, bypassing my walls. At this point I figured out (after puzzling it over) (and after the goblins climbed down the edge of my "floating island" when they left) that the map was actually 3-D. I went into the controls menu and looked up how to move up and down z-levels.
Basically, I taught myself, for the most part... I didn't discover the wiki or the forums until later.
But, TinyPirate - you're only sampling a small portion of the DF community - that of the forums. =P I imagine there's a lot of people out there who enjoy playing but never visit here.