Yesterday, when I first went to open my game, I clicked on Origin, as usual. Immediately, it went into update mode. That's fine, I have it set to do auto-updates — for Origin. I keep the auto-update off for the game itself, since I use mods.

Once it opened I quickly went offline, as I noticed it put me back online. I have been playing all week, so far offline. It wouldn't allow me in my game, despite how I thought I'd followed all the steps, this time. It kept suggesting my game code was invalid? Really? Was this a new discovery, since I've been playing just about every day these last few. When did my code become invalid?

Yesterday, I gave in. I pulled my Mods folder and updated my game. Thinking I had solved said problem. I decided to play for a bit to see just what new goodies were included. (Yes, I read the notes, but sometimes I like to see things in action.) I also deemed it necessary to create a brand new game save. Currently I only had one save, and I won't go into the woes of why at this moment. But without three key mods, I decided it best to leave that one alone. Be that as it may, I started a new game save. Got my family all created, changed out their wardrobe as I am wont to do and set them into a lot without a house until I could get their lot from My Library. That's when I ran into the snag. I was able to grab the lot I wanted, but the 'building' mode where you get that little image of a house and the sounds of hammers, etc. kept going and going, and going and going, and going and going ad nauseum. I happened to glance at the clock on my computer before I opened my game. It was 3:33 PM. I barely had time to play, but I was thinking if I could just get the preliminaries out of the way, I would be set up nicely for today.

Best laid plans … often go awry. I must have tried three or four times to no avail. I went out of the game, cleared the localthumbcache. package and went back into the game at least twice more. The game never seemed to stop trying to load the lot. I finally gave up at 3:56 PM. I had run out of time to play. I'm vexed, but of good cheer this morning, to realize three of my mods are good to go. One hotfix, one update and the other one not reported as broken by the creator. Yay.

Can I get into my game today? Apparently, no. Origin won't open. At ALL. I restarted my computer and tried again. I even went to Origin and re-downloaded, as sometimes in the past that has fixed the problem. No go. So much for this being two-days out from DU. How am I supposed to even get my teens ready (whom I'll likely have to restart, lest the save get corrupted) if I can't even get the game to open. What is the deal, EA?

Does anyone have any other things for me to try? What have I missed?

Please, and thank you, in advance.

~GalacticGal