Yeah, when you mentioned buying and selling in a previous post it occurred to me that is a major argument for some sort of clearly visible stats.

But even then it's conceivable they could come up with a system that still manages to describe an item's key attributes without resorting to a table. Things like weight, materials used, and overall quality could easily be described.

However, I'm still thinking in terms of that simple shovel. What about a weapon? There are probably lots more properties that would be important to know (will this game have enchantments?) so I guess the answer still isn't simple.

Oh well. I guess we'll see what they come up with.