Peer to Peer gaming has never been much of a success outside of a LAN, keeping any game state synchronized across such a model in real-time is difficult enough but when it comes to decision points it's nigh on impossible. Say you had 4 players, player one shoots player two. From players 2 state, player 1 didn't have line of sight for the shot, nor did they from player 3's state, but they did from player 4's.
So did player 1 shoot player 2? well without a server you either have to take player 1's word for it (so you're opening the door to cheaters) or you have to take a vote, if the majority say the shot connected, it did etc
But then you have a very quick action (a shot) requiring a quick decision from all or most of the peer to peer clients, which is only going to complete as fast as the slowest clients ergo slowing the game down for everybody.
Yes lag differences between clients can cause similar issues in some FPS games, but the issue would be *greatly* magnified in a peer to peer topology.
Of course you could just take players 1's word for it, but then they could either cheat, or player two is going to uninstall your game because they keep on getting excessivly killed by players with a lower ping who weren't even in the room (from their perspective) as they died.
A server is more than just a physical hub for game clients, it's an essential 'mutex' in the concurrency problem that is network gaming.
Obviously there are slower paced games / mode of play that might be better suited to a peer to peer model but then at the same time, they'd also be even more suited to a client/server model.
Plus you can get away without UPnP for opening up ports on a players router etc in a server model as you're routing out. The moment you rely on UDP / incoming comnnections, you realistically need UPnP code unless you want your forum filled with "can't connect, help!" messages.
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