I personally made a Diablo style game in about 4 months with Unity just for a laugh, it wasn’t even my main project so I didn’t have that much time to spend on it. For our open world project I must admit it’s a grind, very difficult and 95% of issues come from artwork. Just the shear amount of flapping gums, cut scenes, mesh performance tweaks, lightmapping issues, animation problems.
I think you have to compromise in areas, I’m thinking about scaling things back a little and taking it one step at a time and we don’t have a small team either. Plus learning a new engine on top of it is really adding to the mountain of work… But I have to agree with Techlord, you never get anywhere if you rinse and repeat the basics… Push for the stars, find the common ground and then scale it back to something manageable…
RPG games = fun to play, horrible to make and that’s why when we see a new guy pop out of nowhere saying OMG going to make the best MMORPGZ EVERZ! You just have to smile :D…