After much discussion with the mod team (2 coders and myself), we have decided to pull back from the mmo elements of this game for now. Instead we will be focusing on a Borderlands style of gameplay.
The core game will still be the same, an XP based system, player class, questing, and so on, but instead of a massive online version of this, it will be a single player/co-op game.
The core network infrastructure of UDK is the same as Source as far as player limits go, and for a MMO you need a minimum of 2,000 players. We do not have the resources to create or propagate such a network.
The good news is, the team is very familiar with Source and its code/SDK, which will make development on this much faster. There is also a ton of content that can be used that is premade (textures, models, etc).
Now that all of that has been said?
I have the design documents for the mod almost completed and we are all geared up to begin production starting Monday.
We will still be needing some modelers to do some character models, but I do understand that recruiting without posting any content is next to impossible, so that will have to come later. If anyone here would like to help in that aspect, give me a shout.