[MUD-Dev] MMORPG/MMOG P2P design

Crosbie Fitch crosbie at cyberspaceengineers.org
Thu Feb 27 11:03:00 CET 2003


From: Felix A. Croes

> #3 may not apply to your game.  Crosbie Fitch described a system
> in which a cheating player would be evicted.  Thus, if I can make
> it seem that you are cheating -- for example, by falsifying my
> double-check -- I could get you evicted from the game.

One node gets to arbitrate.  This privilige is granted according to
the amount of 'trust/reputation' they've built up among their peers.
Validation is performed by many peers.

It is not required to detect a single transgression, or every one of
them, immediately. You just need to be able to detect a transgressor
SOON - then you can start doing detailed detective work (assuming
very few transgressors).

So policing does constitute a proportion of the system's workload,
but only a very small one.

  It takes time for a would be transgressor to build up enough trust
  that they can get to own all necessary state they wish to directly
  alter.

  It is very difficult/expensive for a would be transgressor to
  nobble the entire hierarchy of nodes (the peers of these) involved
  in policing them.

The easiest way to nobble the system, would be to contribute so many
large and powerful computers that you get to host most of the nodes
at the root of the hierarchy. However, it wouldn't be too difficult
to have a truly democratic process by which nodes close to the root
may be vetoed by a vote, e.g. "Are we happy to allow Micro-BM to
host the root and two sub-root nodes?".

But, hey, being able to foresee a day when we start worrying about
how strange it is that most of the root nodes are hosted by the same
company, does not blow this idea out of the water.


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