Actually, World of Xeen is an excellent introduction to the genre. It's a lot more forgiving than many, including the other M&M games, and the game mechanics are fairly straightforward.
First of all, don't worry about rolling up new characters, at least not for your first time through. Stick with the default party. It's very well-balanced and is ideally suited to finishing the game.
Second, this thread has some information to keep in mind that isn't obvious from the manual. You might find it helpful, but it's not really meant as an introduction to the genre as a whole.
As for the map, filling it out is best done by keeping one eye on the field and one eye on the minimap. It's lo-fi, but it's really not that bad - once you learn the symbology used, it's easy to figure out what's what, and the dungeons aren't really that complicated.
Equipment can be a pain to figure out at first, especially if you don't want to spend a lot of money having things identified. Here is a handy guide to equipment and equipment modifiers.
A few other quick pointers - most of these are probably all in the manual, but I thought a quick rundown might help.
- SAVE your gold! You'll need every coin you can get later in the game. Put your extra gold and gems in the bank - they will earn interest.
- The world has two sides, the Clouds and the Darkside. You start on the Clouds and can switch between the two using the pyramid-shaped teleporters. The Clouds are easier, so you might want to avoid the Darkside until you have a feel for the game.
- Keep your packs stocked with food. You use up a unit of food every time you rest, and if you go longer than 24 hours without resting, your characters will weaken (keep pushing them, and they may actually die or go insane). Resting also restores all your health and mana, and revives unconscious characters (blue health).
- To buy spells from the guild, you need to buy guild membership, which you can find elsewhere in the city. Each character needs their own membership.
- When you find an NPC that teaches Swimming, make sure everyone learns it. All six characters need it to cross shallow water.
- Give everyone a sling or bow. Being able to soften up targets before they enter melee range is useful. When fighting ranged opponents, try to draw them around corners so they can't soften you up instead. Just like Doom, right?
- The Jump spell will get you past trapped squares unharmed.
- If you have a character with See Secrets (the default party does), the gargoyle arm next to the field waves its arm when you can bash down a wall (the boot icon, or the B key, I think). Some locked doors and gates also have to be bashed open.
- If your inventory is full, you won't be notified if you can't pick up an item from random loot. It just disappears. Keep free slots.
- Speaking of inventory, you can move items from one character to another by clicking the item so it's highlighted and pressing the corresponding key from 1-6.
- Save your game before drinking from barrels or touching other suspicious objects, but you should always experiment - boosting your stats to high levels is key, and these objects are the main way to do that.
I'm not sure if any of this was actually helpful - is there something specific you'd like help with?

Thank you, that was a great and helpful post.
On the map issue though, I think I have a hard time thinking of the squares in the game as a 2D map in my head, and the in-game map seems almost useless. Does that improve over time or something? I know a lot of games like this require you to get a skill or item to have a real map.
For instance I watched some footage of Lands of Lore and the map is very helpful in that game, letting you get a feel for the environment.

It depends on why you're finding it useless, I guess.
The map is really geared towards keeping track of your exploration, rather than giving you a preview of the area. You will need a character with the Cartographer skill to fill out the automap, but sorcerers start with that skill, so the default party is set. As you've probably noticed, every square is darkened until you step into it, at which point it's blocked out on the automap. You can view a much larger map with the scroll icon (the M key, I think), but the same principle applies - you can only see what you've already explored.
You can actually tell from the map what's solid rock and what you just haven't seen yet - an unexplored square has a shadow under it, sort of like it's hovering above the floor. Just hit all of those unexplored squares, and you can fill out the map pretty quickly. You'll want to explore everywhere, anyway, to find treasure caches, magic fountains, secret passages, and so on.
The Wizard Eye spell will reveal every square on the minimap (but not the full map), but it's mainly useful for finding secret rooms later in the game.
This is a tangent, but I recommend using the arrow keys to move around instead of the on-screen buttons, unless you need to sidestep (the numpad might work as well, I don't recall). I find it a lot faster and more intuitive.

you can sidestep with arrowkey left or right while you press ctrl.

I just wanted to second Mentalepsy's point about exploring all the squares on the map. If you use the Wizard Eye spell to reveal the minimap, then you could very easily miss visiting some squares, especially outdoors. This would mean you would miss things that might be hidden on those squares. Think of the map more like those in older FPS games, where it only fills in once you've visited those locations. When you're exploring somewhere for the first time, it's probably easiest to use the main view most of the time, while checking the minimap occasionally to see where you've already been / how to get to the next unexplored area. Once you get used to moving around on the grid (and yes, the arrow keys really help a lot) you won't have much problem navigating using the main view.
There are keyboard shortcuts for almost everything, which can make controls a lot easier. Check those out. And I second the use of the item guides... having to identify everything is really annoying, especially when you have to keep track of the different materials that weapons and armor are made out of.
Mentalepsy also mentioned that See Secrets will have the HUD indicate when you're near a wall that can be bashed. There are other spell effects that do similar things... most of the HUD elements actually indicate something if you have the correct spell on, including hinting at traps and such. The manual goes through all these; they can be pretty useful in certain areas.
I agree that Xeen is a good game to start with (it's the one I started with, long ago). Just remember that if you want to try the earlier games, they're even older. MM1 was made in 1986! I've just finished playing through MM1 and MM2 and enjoyed them quite a bit but they definitely have some old-school design elements about them that could be annoying, so fair warning. I could also point out that MM6 is more modern in design, but I had less fun with it than Xeen. Keep at it, Xeen is a great game.

I'll have to play with the map again, thanks guys. There is no map when walking around though, right? I only saw it when I hit the map button, and then it was small and not very obvious what was road and what was wall I thought.
I'm still reading the manual though, maybe that will tell me more about the map eventually.

Oh. I'm a jerk. I think I see what the problem is.
Look in the top right corner of the screen. You probably just see a grey stone panel with a "Might & Magic" logo, right? Click on that.
That panel toggles between the Wizard Eye view and the normal automap, and I think it's set to Wizard Eye by default. If you don't have Wizard Eye active, it just shows a flat block of stone.
I took a screenshot here, so you can see what it should look like (it's a bit small, sorry). I drew a red circle around some solid walls and a green circle around some unexplored squares. My initial description was a little off, but hopefully you can see what I was getting at.

One of the best ways to learn to enjoy the auto-map in the later games is to start with Might and Magic 1, as there is no auto-map so you'll be keeping notes by hand if you don't want to get lost.

Ahh, that looks ace! Yeah, I didn't see that. I think I will start over then and click to get that map up and running. Thanks a ton!

Yikes. Having grown up on The Bard's Tale and Ultima, I haven't got much advice for those backtracking from today's options to those. I had to learn the hard way (because there weren't any other ways!) that mapping and note-taking are skills that go beyond essential. Write down everything, no matter how trivial. My father had a 3' binder full of notes from Ultima IV: every conversation he had, indexed by town; every dungeon mapped out step-by-step; even tendencies of composition of certain random enemy groups. Now that I'm playing M&M I, I keep a spreadsheet open next to DOSBox and do exactly that - every step I take gets recorded into the file. Footnotes and indicators abound.
What it ultimately means is that when Steve tells me to go see Jim, I can look at my notes and I know exactly where Jim is, how best to get there, and what's likely to get in my way when I do.

Older RPGs, especially those in first-person perspective, require a completely different skillset from modern ones. Four suggestions:
1) take extremely good notes - go overboard!
2) be prepared to get yourself killed once in a while. Because you will.
3) know that the game will do you no favours. No slack will be cut, no information given freely (some of it will only be given once), and all mistakes will be brutally punished.
4) understand that beating these games was seen as a major accomplishment, and not as an accepted part of the game, and the games thus have a high degree of challenge built in.

Remember, these game want to hurt you. They would love nothing more than to make you run crying from your desktop. Don't give them the satisfaction. Persevere, play with great care, and let yourself be drawn in to the games. The best part (for me) about older RPGs is that the story isn't being forced down your throat, allowing you to use something called your "imagination" to make the game world more real than the extremely limited and linear offerings often put forth these days.
For someone you never get to see as anything but a block of text, you can find yourself remarkably attached to these characters.

Thanks for the post. I put off starting this up with all the advice in this thread until after the big RPGs of 2010 were out of the way... nice to know I have some good tips for when I start.

I was very impressed with how immersive MM1 managed to be, despite its extremely basic graphics and technological limitations. The level design is really well done, and manages to make the outdoor areas feel like real outdoor areas despite actually just being mazes.

As for the difficulty, the early games are certainly hard, but one nice thing is that you always have the option of going somewhere else and fighting some monsters in order to gain a few levels. I never felt like I was in a position where I would be unable to finish the game. Just several times when I wasn't yet ready for a certain dungeon or quest. Also, pretty much every item that's worth having in MM1 and MM2 you find from fighting monsters, so while you're getting levels you're getting better equipment too.