Quote Originally Posted by ZhangoSqu View Post
*snip*...it is misleading to imply that the difference is significant enough to make a difference.
It's more about how the information is accessed, than what the size of the information obtained is. If you have a list of say 1000 icons to work with, its less taxing to process 100 pulls from that system than 100 strings from a 300000 list of item names (also consider the item information being pulled at the same time for each slot). On a single player this seems almost trivial, but on larger scale of thousands of players being able to access this information simultaneously the data usage grows considerably (even more so with players that are focused on their inventory almost non stop for things like crafting). Less data usage equates to lower spec'ed systems needing less adjustments. Better for everyone all around.

I'm fine with a icon based inventory system. Perhaps that just because the games I've played the most in the past have always used one.