Oh, and I wanted to add to that that when a server goes down, another server could take over its load, but states of maps and players on the server would be lost. They could send each other "alive" packets, and when a server has not replied for a while consider it dead and either hold election or decide from server loads who should take over the maps. Also when transferring a player server should be sure the server they are transferring the player to is there, otherwise report the exit as closed. Unique items, player files, and maps would also need to be distributed form server to server, which raises another problem.