NcSoft Just tried your Other Game and WOW

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And durability. meh.

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Any MMORPG which has tradable equipment without durability is, by design, flawed. This is because the "good" equipment is rarely, if ever, removed from the collective inventory pool of the players. Because of this there is an ever slipping slope of what is considered good. It directly feeds the bigger-badder syndrome which has been the bane of RPGs since Gygax wrote the original D&D.

For example I remember when I started out on AC that I scraped and borrowed and worked hard for a set of store bought yoroi armor. Loved that armor. Loved the look, the protection. 4 years later when I went back to AC after an extended hiatus I didn't have to work hard for a set of yoroi armor. Nope. Found an ex-vassal and she handed me a nice magical shield I could activate, a mattie coat (of which she had about 20), reedshark leggings (again, maybe about 20), and a selection of weapons which put any store bought or low-level looted stuff to shame. That set of weapons and armor lasted me 20 levels. Of course most people if they were out hunting and looting would have just simply left anything comparable to it to rot because it was also all considered worthless.

The trick, and one that WoW achieved (at least in beta and in the 20 or so levels I saw) was that the item durability does not reduce the item's usefulness for the primary wearer until well after they would have reasonably moved on to a better set. This allows someone to wear a set of armor and hand it down to someone who could wear it, hand it down to someone who would be glad to get it but know it would wear out. 1-2 passdowns then gone. Keeps the above from happening and keeps the item economy as a whole viable.

CoH, on the other hand, takes a different approach. Our items, enc and insp, are non-transferable. Yes, I can give some newb a level 50 enc, he can't use it. I can use it but then I can't transfer it. There is simply no hand-downs, at all.

Both systems have their merits and flaws. WoW's "flaw" is you have to repair your armor and equipment every now and again. To me that isn't a flaw, esp. since they made it simple. Click on the blacksmith, hit "repair everything." Done.

CoH's flaw is that a popular portion of MMORPGs, the forraging/looting aspect, is completely removed. Come level 30-35 one simply doesn't care what one gets, it's all just a source of inf for their next set of enc when they level high enough. This I do consider a flaw because post-40 CoH felt like a grind more than AC ever did even though AC's levels were farther between. It's because in AC I could log in, go to a favorite dungeon, smack mobs around and poke through the loot generated. I might get something neat, I might not. But it entertained me and I honestly wasn't watching the XP bar because I was interested in the tactics of smacking mobs down and sorting through the loot they generated. In CoH after you've read the story-lines and learned (or dreaded) the tactics employed there's nothing left but to eye the XP bar.

So given my druthers I would rather have an equipment system with durability. On the other hand I far prefer the customization of our toons as it stands and would loathe to have to have my character's look change every time he switched equipment. Invariably they'd all look the same.

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*big long post*

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Um...durability normally doesn't help keep things out of circulation, because they just put in some way to repair things. It's just a money sink, really. That, and extra tedium...I usually dislike the whole repair thing.
If you make items not repairable, then you end up with people getting annoyed that whatever uber item they worked to get will wear out.
Now...something like WoW's bind on equip, that takes things out of circulation.

I tend to prefer CoH's method because I tend to hate hunting for things. and I hate trying to trade with people. Especially since item based games tend to end up with a handful of rich people that can buy almost everything, and a whole bunch of people struggling to get mediocre gear.