my two cents are, anyone who thinks that the graphics makes the game, clearly doesn't like games and would rather spend their time looking at screenshots. hell, most of the best games have terrible graphics. minecraft for example.
now that said, I notice that things are getting into speed of development. Im fine with this, it may take toady awhile to do the updates, but he keeps us updated with what he is working on. something other games I play (minecraft) dont really do to the extent toady does. when the updates finally do come out, I find that toady isnt wasting time on piddling little crap that takes other companies (mojang) the same amount of time to do. the last update toady put out (major update) happened... what? a year? a year and a half? after the last one. fine! he added a bunch of stuff that we all love. vampires, new city generation, tons more critters, lycanthropy, the list goes on. in that same amount of time, minecraft didnt come out with anything I really found impressive at all. new blocks, a couple new critters and items, and while I do like the forts, the chasms, and the mines, the new world gen code sucks.
but think about this, I own a lot of games, among them are games like skyrim, just cause 2, all the half-life games, mount and blade, dark souls, fallout 3, new vegas, blah blah blah. I have racked up more time playing DF than I have any of these other games combined. the only game that really comes close to the amount of time spent in DFs randomly generated worlds of !!FUN!!, is garry's mod, and I havent touched Gmod in years.
also it appears the OP of this thread has fled.