hmm i hate to speculate but im going to have to:

if we have an item that we equipped with a materia, say Wand + (+1 INT materia); if we were to take that same Wand and "materialize" it, we wouldn't gain any benefits from that materia already on the weapon? so 'materializing' a Wand and a Wand with a materia attached yeilds the same result? sorry if this sounds confusing

I am looking forward to this though, it takes customization another step and hopefully the time/money sink isn't too long and also isn't too short where people will have the best materia attached to the best equip in a matter of hours after its been implemented.

it would be interesting to see them implement weapons that have crappy stats on em at lv50 and once u get 100% attachment points, u can turn it into a beastly materia. kinda like the lv72 BCNM r/ex weapons that had a latent effect on em. their stats sucked at first but after using it for a while, it unlocks the latent and becomes a really really good endgame weapon