MMO prototype

Being highly frustrated with a particular Kickstarter MMORPG and, to be honest, most MMOs these days, I took it upon myself to build a prototype to see what would happen if I started writing server/client logic.  What type of MMO would I make?

It's a prototype because I don't believe this would actually end up being a finished product and that, if it did, I'd have to hire a networking engineer to redo the backend.  The prototype's goals is to make something playable, have solid server/client communications and have good game logic.

The scale at which an MMO needs to accommodate a large population of players is not only taxing on the server but it's also taxing on the labor required to build the playable content.  The world, the enemies, the quests, etc.  So I have very little expectations that this would ever turn out to be something but I can't help but think "how would I build an MMO with the limited resources that I have?"  I need to make tools to facilitate development.

There's a couple of bullet points that make up the pillars of the project from a technical standpoint:

• It needs to be as server-authoritative as possible (if not completely).  A lot of multiplayer games (and MMOs) take shortcuts by allowing the game clients some limited control.  Not in this prototype.  The primary reason for this requirement is that I'm but a single person and won't have the bandwidth to handle all the cases where cheating would happen; so I have to eliminate that through server logic and cross-reference everything that game clients send to the server.
• This project is heavily inspired by Ultima and The Elder Scrolls series and, thus, requires tech to be developed to allow instancing within a sandbox world not only for group dungeons but also for big story moments (that change the landscape permanently)... and do it seamlessly (aka: no loading screen).
• Establish game mechanics and game logic to enable players to own and decorate houses.  Integrate it with a crafting system to allow construction of guild halls and PvP structures such as towers and walls.