I have seen a few posts about this here but they were all from almost a week ago. I got Spore GE yesterday and after installing it was greeted with the friendly "error connecting to spore servers" error, which directed me to a useless website.

I am using the same account I used in the creature creator. When I type in the email and password correctly I get the connection error but if I intentionally mistype the password I get an "invalid login" message which tells me the game is, in fact, communicating with a server.

I thought that my account may have been bugged somehow so I made a second EA master account. When I try to create a spore ID using the email/PW for the new account I get the "the key you used during installation could not be validated" message!

I have contacted support with no luck and have spent the past 5 hours searching the internet for a possible fix. I have tried everything from port forwarding on my router to completely uninstalling my software firewall. I have tried strange, unconventional suggestions such as using wireshark to capture my connection while attempting to register spore (some guy said it worked for him) to having a file downloading in the background (another guy said it worked for him) while registering. Nothing works and you can tell by those last two attempts to fix it that I am getting desperate.

PLEASE tell me there is a fix for this or at the very least that a fix is in the works and will be available soon.

Hello Killalaz,

Which operating system are you running? There are certain fixes that only apply to Mac, for instance. http://easpore.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/easpore.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=20298

Have you contacted EA Support yet? If you have not yet done so you can open a request at http://easpore.custhelp.com. Please include the following in your ticket:

* The error message you are getting
* Your email address
* Your serial key you used to install the game with
* Your Spore persona
* Your Date of Birth you used to create the account

Killalaz wrote:
I thought that my account may have been bugged somehow so I made a second EA master account. When I try to create a spore ID using the email/PW for the new account I get the "the key you used during installation could not be validated" message!

I get the same error and I have the GE too.

OS: Vista Ultimate 64
Graphics: ATI 4850 (latest drivers installed)
Memory: 4GB
Diskspace over 500GB

Without being able to log in, I can't have all the cool creaters the others all made

EA what's wrong

Oh right, I knew I forgot something.

I'm running Vista Home Premium 32

Core 2 Duo E6600
4GB DDR2
Geforce 8800GTX
16mbps cable through dlink DIR-655 router.

My motherboard has 2 LAN ports, I have tried both. My mobo also supports wifi and so I even tried unplugging the wired connection and connecting to my wireless network and then going into spore to register. Again, no dice.

I have turned off the windows firewall and even completely disabled my routers firewall by putting my PC in the "DMZ". After that didn't work I immediately put my hardware firewall back up.

HugDopey wrote:

Killalaz wrote:
I thought that my account may have been bugged somehow so I made a second EA master account. When I try to create a spore ID using the email/PW for the new account I get the "the key you used during installation could not be validated" message!

I get the same error and I have the GE too.

OS: Vista Ultimate 64
Graphics: ATI 4850 (latest drivers installed)
Memory: 4GB
Diskspace over 500GB

Without being able to log in, I can't have all the cool creaters the others all made

EA what's wrong

Yah, apparently a lot of people are having a lot of problems. And yet there are people who are enjoying the game to the fullest apparently too. I am very frustrated and just plain pissed off at this point.

Yup... I'm annoyed too.

I didn't spend all this money to still have no functionallity.

bump

I have had no problems, until last night when there was one extended period during which I could not connect.

I have a strong suspicion that the problem is that their servers are simply buckling under load - particularly with so many users crashing and having to reconnect frequently, which would hammer their log-on servers much harder than they anticipated.

Of course, your problem may be something else altogether, especially if you STILL can't log on. Have you tried playing during off-peak hours yet?

I'm pretty sure 11pm to 10am EST are off peak hours....

I'm also fairly certain it's not server maintenance. Are you able to log onto the servers now?

If the servers are down for everyone right now then I won't even bother doing any more troubleshooting until later this afternoon/evening.

The problem isn't that I could connect and now I can't either. I still haven't even registered my game, so I can't even login to the sporepedia on the website to check it out. I can't do anything really and playing in "offline mode" just feels like a waste. Sure it's technically the same game but the reason I got spore in the first place was because of the internet functionality.

There has to be some kind of logical explanation for this, it's not like I have some kind of weird off brand computer parts from Ukraine in my PC, I have nforce networking controller same as most other mobos...

bump....


This is driving me insane. I actually ordered a NIC from amazon with overnight shipping since I get overnight from them for nearly free. I had heard that some people were able to fix a similar problem with the Creature Creator by using a different NIC, specifically a non nvidia nforce one.

I can always send the NIC back or use it in something else if my problem gets fixed without it.

I can play the offline mode but it's not very exciting knowing half the games features aren't available to me.

***********I will grant one MAGICAL WISH to whomever gives me a tip/solution leading to the successful correction of my problem!**********

I know somebody, somewhere knows how to fix this.

open a ms-dos command window (windows key + R) and type in cmd, then press return.

Then type "tracert proxy.novafusion.ea.com" and hit return. Copy/Paste the results here. Make sure to remove your IP address from the results (usually the first/second line) for safety.

Tracing route to proxy.novafusion.ea.com [159.153.98.92]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 9 ms 7 ms 9 ms GE-2-3-ur01.wayneave.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.157.65]
3 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms po-10-ur02.wayneave.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.85.192.142]
4 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms po-10-ur01.fairmountave.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.208.65]
5 7 ms 9 ms 10 ms po-10-ur01.christianst.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.208.61]
6 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms po-10-ur01.columbsblvd.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.208.57]
7 9 ms 8 ms 10 ms po-10-ur02.greenwayave.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.208.53]
8 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms po-10-ur01.greenwayave.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.85.192.121]
9 22 ms 15 ms 9 ms po-20-ar01.wallingford.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.208.49]
10 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms te-8-3-ar01.401nbroadst.pa.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.90.10]
11 10 ms 18 ms 11 ms pos-0-2-0-0-cr01.philadelphia.pa.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.9]
12 20 ms 16 ms 12 ms pos-0-9-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.14]
13 13 ms 21 ms 14 ms xe-10-2-0.edge1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.78.169.49]
14 13 ms 19 ms 14 ms ae-33-89.car3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.68.16.133]
15 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 192.205.33.93
16 19 ms 18 ms 22 ms tbr1.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.57]
17 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms cr2.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.16.149]
18 18 ms 18 ms 26 ms cr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.3.38]
19 26 ms 22 ms 18 ms tbr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.16.110]
20 23 ms 18 ms 17 ms gar2.ascva.ip.att.net [12.122.113.73]
21 17 ms 19 ms 24 ms 12.116.77.34
22 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms fert07-eqx-iad.ea.com [159.153.224.226]
23 26 ms 16 ms 16 ms proxy.novafusion.ea.com [159.153.98.92]

Trace complete.

I tried doing a tracert on some other targets, mostly just random popular websites and the 1st line always timed out. Could that be my problem? Do you know how to fix it?

edit: Nevermind, sorry.

The first hop will always time out no matter what, that's the way your ISP is, so no problems here. The tracert shows that your computer can connect to the spore server just fine, and that hints me towards some software firewall preventing your sporeApp from accessing the net.

Is your vista firewall activated? Is SporeApp listed in the exceptions tab? Or are you using some kind of third party firewall like ZoneAlarm?

X,

I have the same exact problems as Kill and completely disabled both my Window's and McAfee firewalls... still no go on connecting to the Spore server. I even granted permissions for the game within the firewalls after bringing them back up.

Odd part about that is that I had to go in and actually search for the SporApp since it did not show up under programs. It still does not show up under Start->EA programs either... think this might contribute to the problem? Kill, did you also have this problem after installing? Is this even a bug?