In the grand words of Yoda, that is why you fail. Game development is a tough, iterative process that requires a large amount of dedication, tweaking, and skill to accomplish. You shouldn't expect to whip out a decent game (even in GameMaker) within a week when you are just starting out, and if you do you've either stolen a lot of code or you have done terrible, terrible things without thinking of the consequences.
So now you should probably read on, and get a better idea of what's ahead.
I'm not going to go into a language or API slap fight, but I believe the best newbie language and API is Python with PyGame.
C++ is not a hard language to learn, but PyGame will get things up on the screen a lot faster, and it's more fun to work with than C++. It should run pretty close to native speed these days (particularly if you use a SWIG'd API like my own Python Injector), but that shouldn't even be a consideration for a newbie -- your first goal is to get code off the ground and running.
In the olden days, I would have recommended QBASIC -- but PyGame runs on all platforms and teaches OO concepts. QBASIC hasn't aged well.
Message boards are an enormous time sink that will consume your free time in petty flamewars with idiots who don't matter. If you do decide to go for a message board, I highly recommend you use GDNet's boards, as it has a huge backlog of messages (that aren't automatically culled, unlike some sites) and a fair moderation team.
If you can build a top-down adventure game with lots of different creatures and items, you most likely have the dedication and intelligence to know how to translate a basic game structure to another language or API.
The problem most newbies have is that they violently oscillate from language to language, when they find out game development is actually hard (and assume it's easier somehow with a different language). Don't do this. Stick with one language or API until you feel secure enough with making games (rather than API initialization code) to translate your software to other languages and APIs that better fit your needs.
If you had the capability to make an MMORPG, you wouldn't be reading this newbie guide right now. Now go back and read the first question.
There are very few decent pygame books out there, and all of the "Introduction to Game Programming" books are either childish pablum or obscene ripoffs.
Save your money; spend it on caffeine and other software tools.