What an interesting way to drum up attention for your game. What's actually interesting about it is your apparent confidence in it's success. Many iOS games don't even come close to reaching $1000, let alone five times that amount. I hope it you break even with this endeavor.

Are there no policies on the app store preventing one from enticing customers with prizes/money?

I appreciate the advice dewfreak! I now know a little bit more about big MMO's and what I need to focus on to better understand them. I was working within the <100 range though. I would be surprised if I were to optimize for anything over 50 people at any point, and in all likelihood, it will be more of an FPS type pub situation than anything. I just want the world to be saved by changes made to it.

If your world is small enough, you don't even need a database, you can just write save/load methods like a regular game, and then periodically save (being careful not to delete the old save until the new one is complete). You only need a database once the world is large enough that you only want to load/manipulate small chunks of it at a time, or too large to loop over looking for objects, or to have simultaneous access by multiple threads*, or to guarantee that data won't be lost in case of server crash. I'm sure you could handle up to million objects on normal hardware before any of those restrictions apply for a typical game.

So this would seem the preferred method. Any resources on storage techniques I might look into to have a good idea of what is possible or what I should be doing?

Good to know that this should be relatively straightforward once I understand the technology surrounding it. I use the word straightforward full well knowing that it won't be, but the general blue prints may be constructed without much revision, at least.

Now all I need to know is what I should do, heh. I would rather people be able to host the games on their own computers, the average being 4GB. However much of that that can actually be used is questionable, and that type of strain on a locally hosted server may prove to be too much even for 8GB. I'm sure there are some techniques available to allow more to be handled client side, but since my game is so early in the planning phases, I cannot yet decide what or how that will be done.

Are there any general sources to recommend for methods required for a game such as this? It would be something more like Minecraft in scope, but not necessarily an infinite world. Something simply where a client can log in and be remembered for each particular server. I have a fair bit of knowledge on the way databases should be constructed but it is limited to SQL. Basically, some kind of starting guide to multiplayer development in general.

I have a general question here about the way online worlds can be constructed so that all changes are retained permanently.

Examples would include:
 - Placement of items remaining in the same area.
 - Dead bodies of NPC's and PC's alike remaining indefinitely
 - Terrain destruction/manipulation being kept(such as Minecraft and the coming Everquest)

My question is that of feasibility: how demanding is this of a server? With my limited knowledge of hardware resource management, I can assume that most of the limitations are brought about by available primary memory. Bodies, player placed items, etc disappear so that they no longer need to be held in memory. I've noticed that these objects tend to last longer in MMO's or other server based worlds, presumably because of the extravagance of RAM usually placed in servers. Is this so? And is the abundance of RAM the only factor relieving the limitations that P2P or offline games face when dealing with non static world objects?

Speaking on the subject of permanence(beyond just leaving a wolf's carcass available to player characters for 10 minutes or so), does a Minecraft server save these states in secondary memory? I assume it and MMO systems alike use some sort of database held on hard disk drives to keep the state of a newly built world, but this seems complex, and more worrying, expensive. I have the ambition to attempt to build a smaller online focused game that would work in the way that Minecraft and DayZ do. What practices should I study? By what standards do these developers build these systems that allow worlds that players may eventually call their own and take stake in?

I know that I have rambled a bit, and the subjects of my questions are as general as they are complex, but any and all replies are welcome. Resources especially.

Thank you.

When's part two? I'm honestly curious as to what this octagon theory is. It's definitely a cool name!

I'm not experienced with working with artists(or much in game development in general), but I believe your concerns should be focused on the bounds of what you're actually trying to accomplish. That is to say, it will depend on the context of the problem at hand. In general, if you need, say for example, a character to run in a certain way on flat ground. They could animate this in their own way and refer to you for feedback. If there are any dynamic variations involved(say the character's feet raise individually with elevation and general inconsistencies within the environment), then you should be working more closely with them to ensure that what they're developing will fall in line with the algorithms you've developed to allow that sort of bone-based animation.

There are many scenarios you could go into and the software we create is about as complex as it comes in terms of the variables that need to be considered throughout. It should really boil down to effective communication so that you can both be aware of each other's strengths and weaknesses, and more importantly what both of you want to accomplish.

This all may be very redundant but I hope it's helped.