Huh.

"While men and women alike can enjoy transversing these spaces, women are afforded an experience they are likely not to have had offline. While both the landscape and its creature might threaten the explorer, in the game space this threat is not based upon gender. Unlike the offline world in which gender often plays a significant role in not only the perception of safety but its actuality, in EQ women may travel knowing they are no more threatened by the creatures of the world than their male counterparts are. While this may seem an odd reassurance, it is far from minor. Risk of travel in-game is tied more to general categories of faction (does a particular town or zone's inhabitants hate your class or race?), power (do the area's creatures know you are more powerful they or are they more confident in their ability to kill you first?), or skill (can you effectively hide, sneak, or pass through undetected?) Because of this gender-neutral approach to threat and safety, there is a kind of freedom of movement that women often do not experience otherwise. It is also the case as one levels and obtains greater mastery of the game sace, zones of free exploration are broadened. An area that was previously quite dangerous to a character was not dangerous because of gender, and eventually it might become accessible with game c ompetency. This is an important pleasure of the game, and many women enjoy extended travel and exploration of the world. (T.L. Taylor 98)

I've been poking through T.l. Taylor's Between Game Worlds: Online Gaming and Virtual Culture. That wall of text up there makes an excellent point. I can only speak from my own experience, but this is huge. I live in a large city and I know some areas you just don't go to and some areas you don't go to without somebody with you. I schedule my life around the whims of other people sometimes i.e., I really want to go to this show, but if I don't find a second person, I'll be fucked since I'm not hopping on the subway at 2 am by myself. Or I have to stay at someone's house because I stayed out too late and I just don't feel comfortable travelling after a certain hour. In an environment that so closely mimics life, I love being able to "stay out" and not having to depend on anybody for safety's sake. It's...hard to explain without sounding like an asshole (so you win, T.L. Taylor!). Obviously this is a virtual world, I'm not actually going anywhere, but most gamers will know what I mean. These virtual places definitely have life to them. Winterspring feels different from Feralas. In the Eastern Plaguelands, I felt more on edge than any place else in the game because of the muted tones and what felt like legions of the Scourge about to chase me halfway across the zone. But I got a kick out of it, and I could explore as long as I wanted without fear. I forget how programmed I am in the real world to be indoors at a certain time, or always have a friend around. It's constraining and awful and it makes me miss living in a small town (which I did briefly for a year or so). WoW gave that to me and I didn't even realize it, heh.