Creating a Desktop Game Using Current Technology

I currently operate a very small Video Game Studio out of my garage (well not really my garage but you get the picture).

We would like to develop an Massively Multiplayer Online Game for DESKTOP release (please not the Windows Store).
I have personally create games using Java, XNA/Mono Game, UDK (man I wish I knew how to get access to the Unreal Engine), dabbled with Unity.

1. Java, in my experience, runs very poorly the larger scale your program becomes, and access to our source code is 99.99% guaranteed with Java Decompilers (that's how I made my first game).
2. XNA/Mono Game is no longer supported, and hence I don't believe we should be using it.
3. UDK is pretty awesome if you require minimal changes the way the game behaves, but if your like us and require many changes it's borderline useless. I have been told that getting Unreal Engine will solve all the issues I was having, however the good people at Epic refuse to allow such a small studio access. My only other option is to join a larger studio with access, steal the Unreal Engine source code and defect, which I don't want to do (moral and legal issues aside).
4. Unity is more or less the same as UDK.

I have recently discovered, and am learning about, C++'s relationship with assembly and why this alone would make it vastly superior to C# (which I am most familiar with).

I would like to code the entire game in C/C++/CX (I have zero knowledge of CX), and the machine I will be doing it on will be running Windows Server 2012 R2, and Visual Studio 2013 (I can't speak for the rest of our studio).

• What would be a good starting point for ourselves and other Studios like us?
• Is there a replacement for XNA that we will have access to?
• Will Visual Studio 2013 ever allow you to create a DirectX Desktop App, and not just a DirectX Windows Store App?
• Is there another Tool Kit, or Game Engine, easily accessible, that you can recommend?
• What is some good advice for new Game Studio such as ourselves?
• How can we create this game without spending money we don't have?

Thanks!
ForbiddenSoul

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Take note this is a serious discussion, I do not want to be told to take a course, or read a book like so many other posts I have seen, I already know how to do that thanks! (Although there is nothing wrong with learning even more)