Sorry for being terribly off-topic, but my first thought upon reading the topic was something along these lines:

You are connecting to a minor warez server.You connected to a minor warez server.A minor warez server evades: evaded.A minor warez server attacks you: redirector attackYou have been infected with inferior pr0n.You are dead.

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the authentication servers for systems like Steam are relatively effective

The authentication for Steam runs on a central server, thus it can be hack-proofed.

What the original poster asked: One word: GuildWars.

A "MMORPG" that utilizes client/server architecture in addition to a P2P based data-streaming model. I don't know the details, but after playing it, it is obvious that GuildWars got the best of both worlds when it comes to network solutions.

Hmmm...well, let me clarify a few things. I can often misconstrue what I mean to say.

I don't actually intend to create an MMORPG where thousands of people are on the same server killing things at the same time. I meant to have a world where only a few players will be in any given area at any given time, but players can communicate as if they are all in the same world. Furthermore, the only server that would not exist is a server for hosting the actual game, a la Diablo II Bnet. Servers for hosting updates, gamefiles, and other tasks that can be handled on a non dedicated server would still be used. But the game wouldn't require any expensive ($8000/a month for 100mbits) internet connections to by financed by the developer. Just a nominal monthly/yearly fee for hosting patches online. That and the authentication servers, which would still cost much much less than providing all hosting. Other than that, the game world would essential be hosted by the players. It would work like this:

1.) Player creates character.
2.) Player starts game.
3.) Game throws player onto the most optimal peer group availible, ideally one with players in the same area.
4.) Player plays. Players can form parties, otherwise the game will move players through zones in the game world. E.g., a player might go to a different area of the game world, at which point the player would be transfered into a peer group that is mainly in that area. Peer groups would be limited to a certain amount of players. This gives the illusion that the player is moving through a living world, since a player would see many different characters. Options would exist to form a party and move through the world with party members, and options would exist to join into the same realm as a friend.
5.) Security is taken care of by main authentication servers, a la VAC.
6.) Viola. Online not-really-Massive MORPG, with a system where all players can interact in a pseudo seamless world, with adequate security. Of course, complications will inevitably arise, but there's nothing to loose in a project that has a low budget like this.

Reading your last post, it all looks good, except for this:

Ask yourself THIS question:

How will the new server find another server to connect to?

You'd have to have at least one server that holds a list of ips of all of the other game servers so you can connect them together. You may have intended this already, if so, then this can be safely ignored. But then again, it probably isn't even worth mentioning :P.

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5.) Security is taken care of by main authentication servers, a la VAC.

Please, tell me more!

Of the few neccesary servers would be one to hold the list of all available games. Still, a system to scan for games without using a central server could be devised, but it would be pointless to do so.

Hplus, you said that Valve's content system can be hack proofed since it runs on a main server. The idea here is that you design an online game where you pay for only nominal online resources, such as authentication servers and patch hosting. If you have an independent dev team that doesn't need the money such a project can bring and can foot the bill, at least initially, for having semi-dedicated servers to get the project off the ground, you have a successful game. It's essentially the network system of any game, like Halo PC for instance (well...without all the horrid lag), applied to an RPG with an added semblance of an integrated world.

Cost: Initial cost of hosting and dedicated servers. No software is needed to be purchased, save for Adobe Photoshop.

Profit: Revenue - Cost of bandwidth for maintenance and distribution. Seeing as dedicated hosting can be had for absurdly low costs, and standard hosting (4GB of space, 75GB of transfer/month) can be had for $5.83 a month (If you don't believe me, search on find my hosting), it's nigh on impossible for such a project to accrue a pricetag that is insurmountable. If all else fails, there's no accountability for pulling the plug.

Now all I have to do is find a way to make everything work exactly as I've planned it, with no leeway for error.[/blatant sarcasm] Oh...crud. Eh. I've got nothing to loose.

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Original post by frostburn Using this model in a MMORPG would be bad I think. There'd be too many people who'd like to cheat. It could work for a MORPG though. What I mean is perhaps 20-50 players, just enough that a normal server-clients network would get trouble. The world could be persistent, but the game would be much smaller and desgined for a smaller group. Perhaps a LAN party, or a group of friends playing over the internet, or a college LAN. The players would pay no monthly fee of course. If they'd have to pay a monthly fee then they'd want better security. Even with a smaller group like this some people might be cheaters, but they'd be easier to spot and the rest of the players could cast a vote (perhaps have a trial) to perm-kill the cheater's character. Eventually the players could refuse the cheater to play any more. This could be done by blocking his ID from the "tracker", blocking his IP from each client or in a lot of different ways. The game itself would have to have more friendly/neutral NPCs or else the world would be very empty with so few players. There's also the question of what the clients should process themselves in a limited-server model. In a pure P2P everything would have to be handled by the clients of course. The clients would have to be well made. In the only MMORPG I've played, Anarchy Online, the client uses 100% of my processor all the time. AFAIK My computer is better than even high-end computers when the game was made, or at least one of the best. I don't even get a decent framerate. In this case I couldn't be able to do all the processing in addition to what I'm already doing. It has to be said though, that the game seems to be a slightly improved Quake2 engine with no GPU offloading, but with a lot more geometry than Q2 (plus all the networking). With a more modern engine which utilises the GPU I'd probably get much better performance. Of course some security would be needed. There'd have to be a central server, if only so the players would know which address to connect to. This could however be just like with Bittorrent, that the server just tracks the users, but don't do anything else. The characters would have to be encrypted, and have a unique key. A perm-killed character (cheater)'s key would be blocked from the game. Well... I'm all over the place it seems. My main point is that in a MMORPG with 1000s of players you have to have the security of servers, but in a smaller group of people who all know each other, at least to a degree you don't need so much security.

im gunna have to disagree with you. i think even a small scale MORPG would be ruined by cheaters. if the game has large potential exploits, then someone will find it and exploit it. if there are cheaters in the game it will ruin it for the majority of the players, and they will leave. then all you have left is the cheaters, who probably get bored of the game fast since they are gods [grin].

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Original post by graveyard filla im gunna have to disagree with you. i think even a small scale MORPG would be ruined by cheaters. if the game has large potential exploits, then someone will find it and exploit it. if there are cheaters in the game it will ruin it for the majority of the players, and they will leave. then all you have left is the cheaters, who probably get bored of the game fast since they are gods [grin].

True, but with a smaller group it's much easier to find the cheaters and for the rest of them to remove the cheater. In a MMORPG with 100 000 players it would be impossible to arrange a poll to kick cheaters, whereas with 100 players it would be much easier. I wasn't trying to say that true P2P (non-massive) MORPG would be good or even possible. I'm saying that P2P Massive MORPG would be impossible.

I'll have to disagree with you, graveyard. It's possible to cheat in any game, yet you still have successes (Diablo II was a success even while there was rampant cheating).

But that's not the point. Nothing can be perfect, but if you design a system where you have a system that dynamically updates itself, you woldn't have that problem. The encryption system I described would probably be quite foolproof, unless a cheater can decrypt 128bit encryptions that change based on the minute of the day that the savegame was saved. Furthermore, using hacks in an online game would be stopped by an online authentication server. Therein, if there was cheating, it would be minimal and stopped. It would resurge, but it would always be defeated before there was a major problem. Ideally, it would. This is barring any large scale screwups.