38 isn't that old.
What I would suggest is if you want to implement this idea and you have little or no prior knowledge and you think it will take a lot of people to help...In reality, you don't need that many, heck you can do it all by yourself, if you need help when you're working through, just ask and see if people will probably help.
What you'll probably need is a cheap program like Dark Basic Professional, sounds pricey for your pay, but it's cheap as far as other programs go and pretty powerful at that. They sell Dark Basic Pro on this site, but you're probably better off getting it from Amazon if you're a bit strapped for cash (I got mine for £15 - about $30)
You'll need a 3D modelling and animation application - Blender is free, but some find it difficult to learn, but it's pretty powerful. What I normal recommend to newbies modellers who want to model for games, is to download 'lithunwrap' for UVMapping, 'Wings3D' (or buy 'Silo 2') for modelling and buy Milkshape3D for Animation and exporting (About $20)
You'll also need a texture/image program, Paintshop Pro or Photoshop do the work nicely, if you can't afford those, the free alternatives are the GIMP and Paint.NET
Music and Sound effects, there's a midi music make called 'Anvil Studio' - or if you prefer using Guitar tabs to make music, there's 'PowerTab' - unfortunately midi is low quality. If you want to spend money, then you've got 'Fruity Loops' - Sounds effects, the game creators sell 'Sound Matter' which are collections of sound effects you can use in your games - but I'd check the product license before you use those (Check if they're allowed to be used Royalty free and commercially)
Learn all of those and you'd be ready to make a fully fledged game by yourself. Dark Basic Pro can have extensions and plugins to make development easy, I use "Barnski's LUA plugin and Sparky's Collision dll 2.0" - these make things more convenient when coding, once you've got the hang of these, you can easily download them (or buy ones from the games creator's website)
To learn, it doesn't take long, I've pretty much offered the easiest cheap route there. To learn the programming, DBP has a fairly easy and basic syntax plus there's a community out there who'd be willing to help you learn when you're stuck or have questions. For 3D modelling, Wings is fairly easy to learn and we already have a community of Wings3D users and general 3D modellers who can offer help and advice - save for UV Mapping and MS3D. Texturing tends to require some artistic skill (Or just perceive what the texture will look like and how you'll draw it) - but you can just as easily turn a photograph of grass into a seamless texture, if you need help knowing how to make those, I'm sure people will off solutions. As for music, apparently Fruity Loops is the easy solution and those midi makers will require some musical knowledge.
Learn these bit by bit and then get onto your project, dedicate yourself to some free time and tutorials you can find on the internet and learn them. As you're learning start making small 'fun' games and then when you feel you're ready, get onto your main project idea. You say you're going to do some online stuff - look into Benjamin's 'Tempest' dll. There's a lot around here to help you make you game.
This won't take years and years, if you stick to it, you'll probably be ready when you're 40 and development may take 2-3 years, of course that depends on how much time you've got and how you dedicate yourself, so don't take those numbers as 'the' figures, it's take me 3/4 years to get the skills (though I need to work on the music side) and I've just started my proper project - and I don't have that much time at all.
So, good luck with it and welcome to the forums.
Hakuna Matata
