Skill-Based Multiplayer Campaign RPG

Some friends and I have been brainstorming for the last couple of weeks, and have come up with a proposal for a new kind of multiplayer game (which we will provide an in-depth website for in the near future). It's sort of a return to the old table top version of roleplay gaming, where you've got a group of players teaming up to achieve goals.

We're not talking MMORPG right now, we're developing a multiplayer, team vs. team, team vs. monsters, limited duration campaign game. There are no "levels," and each class is balanced against one another. Damage is not modified by anything other than Class, combat is skill/"twitch"-based.

Right... what's that mean?

There's a Light side, and a Dark side competing to control various things (depending on which Campaign the server is running, it could be a race to steal artifacts, or an attempt to invade/defend a castle, etc.). The multiplayer experience plays off of this... you and your teammates are the best your faction can muster, and you compete with and fight the enemy team in various Campaigns. There can be around 8 to 10 players on either team.

There are four classes: healer, fighter, rogue, mage. We spent a lot of our brainstorming time balancing these classes against one another: the end result is the "mage > tank > rogue > mage" cycle, meaning each class has advantages and disadvantages. The combat system is entirely skill based... you want to swing your weapon, you hit the attack button. You want to block, block button. Evade... etc. We've created a spell system we feel is unique, with the kinds of spells we have yet to see in games (mages casting walls of fire, using wind spells to knock enemies away from them, etc.). There is collision detection, so the big bulky melee characters can defend the fragile casters and healers.

There are 5 races (dwarf, elf, human, etc.), that can be any class. There is no disadvantage to being a certain race/class combination, but there are advantages--for instance, Elves get a +20 damage bonus when using bows, Humans only recieve a +10, and Dwarves don't get any bonus damage when using a bow. By default you are given weapons that are suited for your race, and if you want to handicap yourself by equipping a different kind of weapon when you join the server, it's your own choice.

Servers can be run by players; it's like a multiplayer FPS in this regard. Find a server playing the Campaign you want to play, wait for the current round to end, then join up. Campaigns are multi-step missions, which bring you through two or three different maps with different goals. It should take anywhere from 1 and a half to 2 and a half hours to play a campaign through from start to finish.

We want it to be so that there are, say, 3 kinds of Campaigns and 2 or 3 of each that a player server can run. Each have to be challenging and fun, and have you adapt to new strategies with each step of the mission.

We plan to use Torque to develop this, but we lack experience with Torque and C++ (if we find that between the three of us it's too difficult, we'll be putting out an ad here--the problem there is that we're college students and we can't exactly pay well at the moment, hah!). I have experience with mapping, and my other friends are good 3d model and texture artists. It's just that the programming end of things will be tough.

Anyway! Any comments or suggestions about this (rather wordy) concept?