Understand that completely
I realize you guys are porting it to C++, but I am wondering what you feel your timeline is on completion?
Also, if I can make a suggestion or two... I'm also one of those that would prefer to run an application such as this on a big, powerful, Sun box. I'm also of the opinion that if it can scale well enough, it should also take advantage of the 64-bit sparc processors it runs.
One of your competitors who shall remain nameless does have an 8-player 64-bit sparc binary, and load with 8 persons on it is about nothing. Quite the difference between that and their 32 bit version running under linux.
Seeing that the vast majority of Solaris installs are on SPARC, and the inherent problems in getting the x86 version to run with certain hardware, I'd leave that as a last resort, focusing instead on the sparc flavor.
Being in possession of several backbone-residing Sun machines, I would be available to do any sort of testing you might require, or which could be beneficial, especially for testing very large numbers of users.
good luck with the port, and hope to see the results soon.