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...

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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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?

There's no real definition of what makes a AAA game, and AAB/AAC don't exist. Maybe the next rungs would be AA, A, B... However, people pretty much just talk about a game being AAA-grade or B-grade. The former means that it's a blockbuster game with state of the art content, and the latter is everything else ;/

Usually I'd say a AAA game is defined by its content more than its engine -- if you've got two dozen experienced artists with decent tools and an average runtime, the game will probably have more impressive content than one with half a dozen artists with a fantastic runtime.

Another definition of AAA that I've seen is just based around budgets -- if you spend $10-$100M then you're AAA.

some of them clearly did not meet what I would consider AAA requirements like support for DX11

DX11 is not really a requirement for current-gen AAA games (though it may become relevant in the next generation of games).

Currently, only a subset of Windows gamers have access to DX11-capable hardware, and it isn't present on either the XBox 360 or the PS3.

If DX11 is a requirement for AAA-games (I haven't played any AAA games I guess ) then I wish you and your artist the best of luck but I think you're going to get disappointed.

Well, good luck making what I assume is an MMO with your gf. Have fun. But you can really modify T3D to whatever pipeline suits you, maybe even coding up your own tools?

Unity has a free version, why don't you give that a try? For networking, there are many third party solutions including Photon, Smartfox Server and uLink. As an indie, Unity is by far your best option.

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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There's no "limitation of unity" there, just when the build in tools don't fit, use another, it's not the core of the engine, it's really just a basic game engine with do-nothing gameobjects and some basic features, don't like em, don't use em & roll your own, no sense in re creating an engine for that.

It's very flexible, unless you consider third parties being able to add and resell (without having source code access to the engine) the features i mentioned above isn't flexible enough! (those features are some of the core features that are touted in UE4 for exemple, and third party providers just tossed them onto unity as if it was nothing and sell them for small change in the asset store).

Check out their asset store (it has a website version), you'll see why this engine rocks!