HonestDuane

You probably aren't trying to make a AAA game, so you won't have a AAA pipeline, nor should you.

I can't really agree with that. The content pipeline is far and away the most important feature of a game toolkit - you can have all the fancy physics, AI and rendering in the world, but it's all for naught without the right content...

So what defines a AAA game verses AAB game? Would you be willing to go into more detail on this?  This was an argument used by the engine companies; they all claimed to be AAA ((and thus worth the expense) even when some of them clearly did not meet what I would consider AAA requirements like support for DX11.. So is there a checklist or something you can use to know if its AAA, AAC, etc?

My GF, wife-to-be-fiance, etc.  That is why I said "other half" as despite out best intentions we are not married yet so  can not say "wife" just yet, even if that would make it simpler.

Yes the goal is to use C++ due to the perf requirements of some game mechanics we want to explore, especially on the server side as we want to support as many people playing at once as possible and we already have experience with systems that use it.  One of the things about Unity we didn't like was the build in limitations in Raknet for only supporting a small group of people on a server.  So what I am hearing you say is that if there is a limitation or problem in unity, the store provides a way to buy it away.  Is that the case?

Thank you for being blunt and honest everybody, I appreciate it and once again feel like i need to reiterate that i have a thick skin and do not feel offended easily.  I'm just diving in as fast and hard as I can because I want the Dunning-Kruger effect to slap me around a bit as much as possible, as soon as possible, so I can learn my limits, and then learn to exceed them once they are mapped out.

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This may help you:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLID_(object-oriented_design)

What you are asking for is overly general; So I'm giving you a very general answer and that is that in most code bases its good to keep in mind that as long as classes have one responsibility, they are closed for modification but open for extension by design, and you follow all the OOP rules, you should be good.  If you need to learn these rules first, then I suggest you invest in a book called "Clean Code".  Most of the code samples are in java but the things it teaches will make you a better programmer in any language for any project, even if you disagree with some of the things the author :(Commonly simply known as "uncle bob") says.

To explain: I'm longtime dev in other things but due to different issues I didn't have time for graphics programming before this.

To paraphrase my 3d artist other half "Looking back, Its really frustrating how some really great games that just had [cruddy] graphics did very badly, while games that sucked  did well due to epic shiny graphics".

That is why we are looking into an engine;  because  my other half is a Lead 3d artist for an MMO company and she has her ideas on what an asset pipeline should be - shes also the most experienced of us - and so has "requested" that it be as nice as possible.  I just cant afford Granny and as of this morning she now "has her heart set" on a specific engine that I can not afford so as a result, I am looking for options that will make her happy,. and the Torque and Unity3d engines all fail her requirements due to various issues.

1. Unity3d:   Is actually very restrictive on what you can do with it, and 'm also reading a lot of information that suggests it has poor performance from a networking and "open world" perspective that makes (from an art perspective) crowds, instancing, impostors,  shadows, and instances particles an issue. I'm also reading a lot of item on unity3d that suggest core functionality in its base objects for even simple things like getters and setters just doesn't work, due to a really bad lack of QA, and while I do not know how credible such claims I am reading are, the idea of paying almost 2 grand for something that doesn't work really scares me and a lot of people seem to run into the problem.

2. T3D: I have no personal experience with it, but my Artist took one look at a youtube video on its feature set and said "no"..

Maybe some of you with more experiences with it can dispel these myths or provide greater detail to explain each of the engines?  I have a feeling I just have the classic artist verses programmer problem that is a part of the game industry anyway ;)

Most of the things you get on such sites like fiverr are usually stolen from open source solutions.  I had a friend attempt to use that site to offshore some work; It didn't end well for him as the result he got back had a giant GPL header on the top so he couldn't even polish the turd he was given to use it.