Huh, I had no idea about Terraria. When I saw screens I thought it was just another side scrolling shooter. Not that that makes me want to play it.
Dwarf Fortress has caused me to begin studying geology. While that might not seem like much, I'm 31 and already have a college degree, so I'm just learning it for fun because DF just sparked that in me.
When I'm at work, I design optimal workshop/stockpile layouts and pixel art designs (for great hall flooring) on graph paper.
I have an entire binder full of printed magmawiki articles.
I do appreciate however all you all have said about minecraft. As I have never played it I just knew it by it's "theme" (mining and building megaprojects it seemed to me) and while I knew it lacked the complexity of DF I was not aware (aside from graphics) there were so many fundamental differences.
Nor am I saying DF players are "better" than minecraft players. My marine analogy was just to describe how to really enjoy DF you have to work hard with it, stick it out, put up with FUN, and revel in all that it is (i.e. complexity) while popular AAA games these days (CoD, Modern Warfare) are so brainless there are videos on youtube of people winning levels without even shooting their gun at enemies, such that it's basically a cinematic experience pretending to be a game. We are more patient, which in this day and age is even more rare than intelligence.
The funny thing is the things I would add to DF make it MORE complex (More races, underground civs with whole histories in worldgen, more kinds of stone/ore/metal - there are probably already enough gems). I'm kinda sad Toady is focusing on adventure mode right now because I think the caverns could be really fleshed out. Oh, and I long for the day when computers are good enough so that we can have forts with thousands of dwarves and actually raise armies (20-30 dwarves does not an army make) and take the fight to the bloody goblins!