Dear EA,
Thank you for your wonderful support! You have fixed my problem entirely!
In the process of following the latest troubleshooting steps, I followed the directions very carefully. I made a copy of My Spore Creations and then manually eradicated every last trace of Spore from my system as per your instructions, with the exception of the My Spore Creations backup, of course. Isn't this long entire process of removing everything from all these obscure locations on my hard drive and from within the registry supposed to be done by the uninstaller? Alas, I admit my own shameful ignorance in comparison to the great intelligence of EA's tech support and dutifully followed all instructions you have so generously imparted upon me.
Then I reinstalled Spore, signed into my Spore account and attempted to install the patch. It was here that my own stupidity temporarily foiled my progress.
In my foolishness, I launched the game and allowed it to download the patch. I don't think the crashing problem wanted to be solved, because it made every effort to keep me from patching the game, starting first by purposely limiting the bandwidth allowed from your servers to my computer. Nevertheless, I persisted and waited about 45 minutes for the patch to finish downloading. Take that! I thought my victory was close at hand. The game asked me if I wanted to install the patch, and naturally I said I did. But then the wily game crash retaliated by giving me an error saying the patch could not be installed. I knew this wasn't OK, but I clicked the OK button anyway and it brought me back to the main menu. This was indeed a tricky beast to slay, and I figured I would have to resort to tricky tactics as well.
I was wise to this particular trick, as I had similar problems the first time I tried to patch the game from 1.0 to 1.1. So I checked the cache folders for the EA Download Manager, but to my chagrin they were empty (just as they were the last time I encountered this problem). At this point I began to wonder why I even had that useless EADM installed. It never seems to do anything. Unwilling to spend another 45 minutes downloading a patch that won't install again, I retreated from my attack and accepted defeat. For the time being! The crashing bugs may have won the battle, but I knew that through following your enlightened instructions, even a simple fool like me would be able to win the war!
Today I decided to give it another try and had a much more successful experience. I must have caught the bugs off guard as they didn't have time to limit my bandwidth or keep the patch from installing. The patch downloaded from within the game in about 10 minutes and installed correctly without a hitch. At this point I realized it was practically guaranteed to be blue skies and vast space from here on out! So I launched the game again, or maybe it automatically launched itself, I can't quite recall at this stage. (I hope you don't hold it against a simpleminded idiot like myself that I don't remember this exact detail.) I let the intro movie play and allowed the game to log me in to the Spore servers. Success after success!
All that was left for me to do to ensure my victory over the bugs was to load my game and see if these extraordinarily complex troubleshooting steps actually allowed me to visit my home planet without crashing the game. It was at this point when the crashing bugs revealed the aces up their sleeves. There was no saved game to load.
Apparently, if you only back up the contents of My Spore Creations, which consist of various image files and videos of your creations, it doesn't actually back up the save data for the game!
"Oh no!" I thought, "I've lost all of my saved games and hours spent building, creating, exploring, expanding, etc." And with a heavy heart I felt the hopelessness of defeat.
I began to ask myself questions such as: How could the brilliance of EA Tech Support have failed me? How could the well trained, highly educated, unimaginably omniscient technicians at EA have failed me?
It took quite some time to understand, but the gears started turning, and the fleas jumped off my head as the temperature began to rise to uncomfortable levels they weren't accustomed to, and I realized that you had not failed me. You are, in fact, saviors! You absolutely solved the problem beyond a shadow of a doubt!
Now, forgive me for being a little bit slow. As I alluded to earlier, I'm not the sharpest spoon in the drawer. But what I eventually realized was that with no saved game data to load, there was absolutely no way the game could crash when I visited my home planet. I don't even have a home planet anymore! Indeed, as I let it sit here on the main menu, showing the spiral galaxy and six uninhabited planets on which to start new games, the application is very stable and it does not appear as though it will crash any time soon.
Victory is ours! Your plan was incomprehensible genius! I'm sorry I ever doubted you. Will you please forgive my unfaithfulness?
Forgive me if this is out of place, as I would never assume to understand your brilliance, but I think I have an even better method to keep the game from ever crashing again. If I just follow the steps you outlined previously, except just stop before reinstalling the game, I'll have no game to crash either! No home planet, no game, no crashes! It's absolutely brilliant.
Though there is one area of your ingenious plan that I could use a little more clarification on. Without a home planet and without a game, what am I supposed to do with those tiny little images of my creations that I backed up? The game (I haven't eradicated every last trace of it from my system again yet) doesn't even recognize half of them as being my creations anymore, and they won't really do anything neat like they did when I spent so many hours building, creating, and perfecting them. I'm almost beginning to think I should just delete these as well, but I know, with your unending intelligence, that you told me to back them up for a reason. Please shed some light on a poor halfwit who lacks the understanding.
I praise you for your incredible and undeniably great wisdom! You have helped me so much, every step of the way. I am completely and absolutely satisfied in every way possible, thanks to your generous support. You have my eternal gratitude.
Thankful always,
Deozaan
