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[Dravd]

I was interested how has DF grown over the year and how many are long time fans!

[Salmeuk]

I've been playing since ~6 months after the first 2d release, IIRC. I was just a kid! Which is one reason I had the patience to struggle through the interface. I also remember being too scared to make a forum account until a year or so later.

I don't think playing for a long time makes you any better at the game, really - it's easy to survive. However, it DOES make it easier to play with the vanilla interface, and I've also noticed older players developing trademark styles of fortress design.

Also longtime players are generally batshit and no longer play by the accepted rules of the matrix DF.

The point where the game transitioned from 2d to 3d was mind-blowing. I still remember the day that update dropped (after like a year of development, which is massive as a teenager), I spent hours and hours just embarking, abandoning, and embarking over and over again. Most people don't point out that the 3d update also brought the ability to embark anywhere within the world, excluding mountains and oceans, whereas before it was limited to just a few preset locations. The game just felt that much more real.

In 2d it had always been the same deal, river --> cliff --> cave river --> chasm --> magma, so it was fucking RADICAL to embark in flat, sandy deserts or tropical shorelines or marshy riverplains or lakeside cliffs. Back then there were bottomless pits that pierced to the surface, huge map-spanning chasms with native bat populations and awesome cave rivers that could be used for power, fishing, and traps. I think bottomless pits are still in, but I sorely miss cave rivers. I think some of my oldest maps on DFMA show some of these features.

The best/worst part is, I have yet to find a more compelling game.

[dillonsup]

Thanks to my dad I was one of only few kids who grow up in my generation who would play a game despite the games graphics, and i used to watch him play one of the Ulitma games on an apple 2e emulator so i had a soft spot for simple graphics. I remember then watching a video in 2012 about some dudes play-through of DF. I didn't know what was going on but i was enjoying how the game looked i liked it's artstyle and from what commentary i was hearing i thought it was a cool game. However for some reason I went to another video and did not look up the game.

It was the end of 2013 and for some reason I started having flashbacks about that DF Playthough. I went searching Everywhere and eventually found the game. I looked up a tutorial before heading straight in (just like i do with most computer games) And from there I started playing.

[Fleeting Frames]

Well, I suppose this poll does into the thing where old used to be active players won't vote, but that's question of a feature vs bug, really.
 
(And this spring, after reading lets plays and itching to build something cool.)

[Max™]

40.06 after seeing a couple funny sounding comments regarding df bug reports and taking the leap.

[thvaz]

I started playing just some weeks after the first release. I was 25 at the time. Since then I play for some weeks after a big release, and later when the last bugfix of that cycle hits, some weeks more.

[kilakan]

2008-ish (about a year before I made my forum account.)  Got into it at a national science fair as another dude there was playing it on his laptop and it looked awesome.

[IronTomato]

I started playing DF just after 34.01 (I think) was released. I had seen mentioned in an article somewhere, and recognized the name, which I had seen on the Minecraft Wiki a long time ago. I started to read more about it and soon discovered that the stories people told about their experiences with it were hilarous, so I gave it a try.

[BlackBronze]

I remember I stumbled upon Dwarf fortress one day in 2014 when I was on the Minecraft Wiki home page. The game had begun to lose its once bright luster, seeming more desolate and predictable. Despite it being 3D, it began to seem flat and featureless. I reached a point where I needed a game that had more complexity and gave the player plenty of freedom to interact with the world. So, while going on the wiki, I saw in the description that the game was inspired by three different games, one of them being Dwarf Fortress. Being a D&D fan, I saw the word "Dwarf", I clicked the link. Long story short, haven't gone back to Minecraft ever since.

[Tiruin]

Remembering my first post on this forum, I played quite around 2008/2009 and was utterly confused by things (I wasn't present for the 2D ) purely because I didn't understand how hunting worked [and you by default started out with a hunter, and I wanted her to shift into being my soldier-marksman, and then discovered I didn't know how the military worked] and then all these workshops and there was no help manual! And then there was water and I had concerns about making a well, but more specifically getting water to actually make drink for my dwarves! (Because I thought 'hey, they must need water along with a crop and such for making and distilling drinks, right :V') This ended up with me emptying a surface pool by digging the z-level beneath (as I was on an elevated slope and had no idea what 'channel' did or whatever those fancy tiny pyramids meant all along the wall) and then panicking when water rushed down and filled the everything where I was carving out my initial landing site. Along with trying to make farmland on those wet tiles (despite being in a plantable area, but didn't know that because "no water" ), there's me flailing around to wonder how to get food given my hunter's kill, and then sacrificing my starting animals because I had no idea how to farm or what labors/professions turned on the ability to grow food. And then there was the fisherman...which spurred necessity to test out every workshop with the word "fish" because I thought all those raw fish need to be cleaned before they're made into food. Which wasn't ending at the fishery workshop (because they could be made into meals...).

Oh my newbie days, applying many aspects into DF because I was busy flailing at how colorful the ASCII was and how much detail there was...The first sentence has 'my first post' because I made this account around several months after I started--this is my first forum, and I was a ton shyer back then (which is why it took so long to make an account). Still love the stories until today. \o/

E: To be more precise, 2008/2009 was when I started. It was 3D and I don't recall any links in the downloads for 2D, and I may be off by a few months give or take between then. ._. It all occurred because I was on an internet hunt for 'roguelikes to play' since I'm an avid roguelike fan. >_<

[varnish]

2008. It was reading Nist Akath that got me into it.

[Kolnukbyne]

I first played in 2011, I think. It was when I was big into Minecraft to my shame and I saw it on the front page of the Minecraft wiki listed as one of the game's influences.
I embarked in a swamp, everyone was unhappy because I couldn't make more alcohol since we had no vegetables left because I didn't know how to farm, then an army of Goblins arrived and I decided not to play again for a year or so.

[Aristharus]

Started playing on the PC the day it released. Had been playing in my dreams and imagination since the first gameplay videos Toady released.

Actually when Toady first posted that he'd been working on a new project, "a dwarf game", I was disappointed because it sounded like a longer commitment and I was hoping for updates for LCS of WW1 Medic. A longer commitment of... a year or so. I may have guessed slightly wrong there...

[Putnam]

I know my first version was before 0.31... first actually started playing right after 0.31.25 was released, though.

[Chief10]

My introduction to DF was very childish and unexpected. I think it was late 2010, I was a teenager and my younger brother typed 'penis' into youtube as a joke. Hit enter without seeing the ruse, the first video was something along the lines of 'Let's Play: Minecraft Beta - Exploding Green Penis'. I googled minecraft, read of some connection to DF, then the rest is history.

Ironically I played DF for years before ever trying Minecraft.