Equipment

The concept of equipment is well-used concept in RPGs and to some extent FPS/Adventure games.

In RPGs equipments usually includes armor aswell as weapons while FPS games mostly focus on weapons and adventure games mostly on tools. Another difference is that FPS/Adventure games often lets you carry every weapon/tool you find while RPGs forces you to choose what weapons and armor you want to carry with you with different stats and each item having a certain weight.

Armor
For example leather armor may not protect you as much from damage but it is lighter and allow you to move more.
This difference may be theoretical or practical in-game. If it is practical there really is both advantages and disadvantages to the different armors but if it is theoretical it is mostly a way to justify stopping mages and rogues from wearing heavy armor and getting too much damage resistance with World of Warcraft being a good example of the later.

Armor is usually found as different parts named after the bodypart where it is worn with the most usual being:

• head
• chest
• legs
• hands
• feet

The parts can depending on setting usually be interchanged for parts of another type as long as the character can wear that type so it would be possible to wear a plate chestpiece and have the rest being cloth armor.

Weapons
Weapons somewhat naturally lend themselves to advantages and disadvantages.
some weapons allow you more range while others do more damage and/or a greater rate of attack.
Examples would be:
sword (melee) <--> bow (ranged) for medieval worlds
shotgun (short range, medium speed) <--> sub-machine gun ( short to medium range, fast speed) <--> sniper rifle (long range, low speed)


Tools
Tools can be anything from lockpicks/hacking programs to hammers to repair armor. It does usually not affect the stats of the character (except maybe by having a bit of weight) for more then the single task it was intended for (such as high quality lockpicks making it easier to pick locks).

Stats
As i said above equipment can have different stats and this includes changing the attributes of the characters (for example giving a certain amount of extra strength).
This is all but a standard as far as MMORPGs go and allow splitting equipment into different tiers where a later tier has greater stats then a earlier tier.