Jenna In Real Life

I have a bad sense of direction.  It is truly, truly horrible.  To the extent that my childhood friends go into shock when I arrive at some new meeting point without driving around in circles for hours first (granted, the gps in my car helps quite a bit.)

Unfortunately this extends into virtual worlds, and I have to pay extra-close attention to get anywhere that I want to go.  I am, oddly enough, pretty good with maps (the benefit of being a visual person) and I make heavy use of the mini maps in virtual worlds.  There are certain implementations of mini maps that are particularly helpful / not helpful, and these are a few things that I have found to help me get around:

- Many different levels of zoom.  If all I can see is in close and way way zoomed out, I have a hard time fitting the two together in one geographical space.  Having several levels of zoom help me do this better.

- Option to keep the map north-up.  I can’t even begin to describe to you how helplessly lost I get if the map keeps twirling around to keep my avatar pointing up.

- Labels / icons for landmarks and NPCs.  This one sort of goes without saying and seems to be implemented in most mini-maps that I’ve seen.

I don’t know whether these would be as helpful for other people as they are for me, what do you find to be particularly helpful in a mini-map?

Also worth mentioning is that Free Realms gives players the option to show trails that will lead them to where they’re supposed to go for a particular quest (shows up as green dotted line on the ground for the player to follow), this certainly helps me get to quests but doesn’t help me learn the geography of the place.  I’m undecided on whether I like this feature or not.