EVE uses Python on both client and server. But it also uses C++ on both sides.

I've made server-side software for MMOs in Python. It's perfectly feasible these days. But I agree that you need a good amount of education to get there.

And there are lots of off-the-shelf servers you can use if you don't need 100% control over serialisation and the client language. Examples include: Photon Server, SmartFox Server, Union Platform, etc. They're not necessarily going to scale up to 1000 players per server, but then lots of C++ servers don't manage that either.