In light of a quip I made to a friend in WoW last night while travelling from the Badlands to the Burning Steppes (specifically, "map to landscape! (insert cursing here)" that I frequently and persistently flip east and west when trying to reconcile the minimap on the UI to the environment), I found *this* snippet off the BBC news page of interest this afternoon:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4202199.stm

Now, I'm an excellent spatial navigator in real life (I'm much better at getting from place to place in a foreign environment using only written directions than my male partner or other family members, can parallel park with ease, and unlike most females that I have observed prefer cardinal directions to landmarks), but in a purely artificial environment like WoW, where the minimap is continually oriented N, plus it is in an overhead facing view like a held map, I find myself uncontrollably flipping it in my mind and I have to frequently check the overland map to determine my direction of (particularly east-west) travel.

The article made me check my fingers as well; for what it's worth, I have the 'male-like' pattern of finger length, with my ring fingers about 1 cm longer than my indexes, about .5 cm shorter than the middle, but I did find it interesting that this trait, the navigational results, and sexual orientation in females, have all been linked to levels of testosterone exposure in the womb during embryological development (with females who were deficient in testosterone during early development showing impaired spatial and mathematics skills).

It also lends support to the hypothesis that numerous traits that we associate with 'gender' are both hormonally influenced (at least during development) and occur on a continuum; it would be interesting if the researchers did a larger scale study and looked at ANOVA/ANCOVA (analysis of variance/covariance) to determine if variation within the genders exceeded the difference between them, and whether variation within one gender greatly exceeded the other.

But, to get to the 'point' of the post, I'm curious: regardless of your own gender, do those of you who play online MMORPGS (all of us, I am assuming) encounter any peculiar difficulties with navigating in a purely artificial environment? If you are female (and hopefully a few females will reply), do you perceive that you have any difficulties that your male colleagues appear not to have? Does anyone else have trouble with the minimap to landscape conversion? Back when I played EQ, I was rather hard on some of the individuals in my guild (more often female, but there were a couple of males as well) who could not seem to find their way out of a paper bag when it came to getting from point A to point B in EQ. Seeing this makes me at least a little curious (beneath the intense irritation at the likely sexist can 'o worms any serious inquiry into this topic will open) as to whether there was something to most of AC's gals not being able to find their way anywhere...

Regards,
Nydia

I navigate a lot better than my "peers" in artificial environments. Maybe it was 'cause I was a ranger, but I had no problems memorizing zones and navigating by landmarks in EQ. I've never used any kind of atlas, and I navigate by directions by ease.

In WoW I can usually find what I'm looking for. People keep asking me "where's xxx" and I go "read the fucking quest!"

However, the minimap confuses the hell out of me. I don't flip the axis, but I can't use it to navigate either. All it's good for for me is track. Speaking of Track, track in EQ messed my directions up. I never could follow it properly. I usually found what I was looking for by getting a general direction, and then using a search pattern, a lot better than trying to follow the "your target is..."

In real life I'd consider myself to have average to above average directional skills. I'm rarely lost, and I can usually reason the way from point A to B without following a previously travelled route.

My ring finger is longer than my index finger.

I haven't found any navigational difficulties in everquest, though i must admit the maps changed my perceptions of what the zones looked like - i'd generally hug the zone wall and not realise i'd turned a corner or something - didn't stop me from getting places, I just had to fix my image of the zone in my brain :) (For example, i could have sworn the Skyfire ramp was along the wall from the ledge in OT, instead of around that pesky SE corner). Also generally after one person leads me to a place, i could reenact that route - such as the way through the warp maze in skyshrine.

My ring finger is also longer than my index by about the same margin as Nydia

Being male, with a great deal of spatial orientation ability... my ring finger is longer than my ring finger by the same margin or more.

I got my Private Pilot license before I turned 19 years old. I got my instrument rating in about half the time it normally takes, mainly because I can picture my "position in space" in my mind.

I have seen those tests where you unfold a complex object... and find them quite easy to do. I have always had an easy time with mathmatics and sciences. One of my long time friends (male) has a short ring finger and gets lost going from the kitchen to the bathroom. He drives around the block to find a spot where he can pull straight in to park so he doesn't have to parallel park.

From my observation, it would seem to hold some validity, but I would like to see more research as well as some checks and balances in the research data.

<chuckle> I plan to look at my sister's hands... she too has good spatial orientation abilities.

I have not noticed any real trouble navigating in EQ. I find myself giving directions and asking for directions by compass orientation instead of landmarks. I find that instead of following the cursor across the map, I look at the map to see which "direction" it is, and then follow my compass to that spot.

Interesting article... thanks for the post.

I also remember reading a study that related the finger ratio and athletic performance in males. The larger the ring finger than index, the better they did.

The mini-map occasionally confuses me, but usually only when I get lazy and try to get from one place to another looking only at it,heh. Navigating the environment itself is pretty easy for me once I got the feel of the game. I'm still practicing how to do all the actions quickly on the move, but traveling is no problem.

In everquest I had the loc system down pat and could get from point A to Point b quite easy. Being a necro helped. Feign+DA+that inter zone teleport spell.

Dear Grumblin:

I always thought that Skyfire was 'down' or southish, from the ledge to Frontier Mountains myself, or on the southwest side someplace. I never did get the relationship right until they put the PoK books in and I realized it was southeast of the OT outpost!

I lived and died by loc numbers and cardinal directions in EQ. Given one or the other of those coordinates, I could find anything; but I'd get frustrated as hell when someone would insist on feeding me (often meaningless to me, especially if they were terrain features - one hill looks pretty much like another) landmarks as a means of navigation. I remember, very early on, after dying countless times to lions trying to find my way around to/from that back inn in East Commonlands, discovering the gal in the hut on the road by herself that sold a *compass* (for 2 silver, if I remember right) along with her other odds and ends. Did anyone else bother with them, back in the day? I used that thing religiously in areas I did not know for quite a while... That having been said, it was a sad day in EQ when they automatically set everyone's "Sense Heading" at 200 and put a compass on their screens, as useful as they undeniably were.

Unless they were really obvious, I couldn't make any sense of virtual terrain features at first glance and blocked them out completely in favor of coordinates or feeling my way around a zone wall, which I find interesting as I don't do this in real life (well not so much ;) )... I'm not aware if WoW has any user accessable /loc numbers, and it has the maps in any case, so it's less intensive on one's actual spatial conversion skills as one always has the map to refer to, flipping notwithstanding.

Once I've seen an area, and run a path, I do much better by landmarks, but I'll never forget Faervas' and my first few weeks in EQ:

"Hey, where did you die?" "Uhm, in a valley..."

Later on, when I was dragging our little band from pillar to post, and would see someone's hit points dropping precipitously, it was: "Get the loc of your corpse!"
(*Sometimes* that was a joke... ;) )

Regards,
Nydia

On the first trip to any location in EQ that I expected to visit again in the future, I would take mental note of the coordinates of any points of reference unless the trip was a quick wallhug. After a dozen trips, I could probably run from the Firiona outpost to Sebilis blindfolded (waterfall, tunnels, ruins, and the short tunnel to the orb and all) if someone read out my coordinates at regular intervals. Without a mathematical reference or a map, though, I'd probably have to ask for directions every time on the longer routes.

I sometimes get lost on the way to the bathroom....:(

/hijack on)

Will!!

We miss you in WoW :/. What's your status? The four-death run through the aptly named 'Run of Terror' in Un'goro Crater last night while trying to find my way around the zone just wasn't the same without you :).

Call, email, something... /rummages through box of spare parts) We can always send you something if need be...

Warm regards,
Nydia

P.S. Speaking of pitching landmarks for numerical coordinates, we didn't do so bad at finding the 'Tommy's' last month based on wrong-looking street numbers alone, and I think my stomach is still suffering ;)...

Interesting article. I don't doubt that their assumptions could be correct, but they only tested forty women. That's a pretty small number, truth be told. The fact that they didn't try to use some amount of men as a 'control group' also makes me wonder about this research.

Hehe, that article makes sense to me... Im female and my ability to find my way around places without a really really good description sux, both in game and irl... I can easily get lost and wander around not knowing where the heck I am irl and constantly have to rely on asking people for directions and stuff, atleast if its in a new place where Ive never been before... And in EQ I never got the loc system, I hated it when I asked for a description to somewhere and someone gave me the loc... hehe... Im pretty sure I went on many grps nervs when it took me forever to find them...

But hey, it makes everything feel like an adventure :P

My ring finger is shorter than my index finger to ;)

I havn't played EQ in many years and can still picture the zones pretty clearly on a 3-d scale in my mind.
Whenever I visited a new area..after 1-2 trips I'd have the layout in my mind and could just navigate it from a metal picture of "where I should be" even if I wasn't paying much attention.

In real life I get lost constantly while driving.

It is very easy to get place to place for me in Everquest.
/consent guild ;)