The mini-map is the small display seen in the upper right corner of your screen. This display shows other players that are close (white dots), mining nodes which are ore rocks (yellow dots), herbing nodes (green dots), wood / lumber from tree nodes (cyan dots), NPCs (magenta dots) and any NPC that has a quest for you or is waiting for you to turn a quest in. You can minimize and restore this window by pressing the P button on your keyboard. This will cause the miniatue graphical map of the area surrounding your character to vanish leaving behind only the scene name you are currently in.