Screw it. Trying to contact them.
Update: Waited an hour, got someone who didn't respond for another 30 minutes. I was then transferred to a helpful guy who talked me through all the troubleshooting steps I had just done (and said I had done) for about half an hour. I then mentioned that someone had said something about "entitlements" being needed for Origin to properly recognize ssleay32.dll to which he responded that he had looked through the entitlements and none applied. I was then told to restart my computer with a fresh boot without other processes and was sent an email for further troubleshooting steps involving UAC (which I had done) and CHKDSK (which didn't change anything) and finally a reinstall (which I had done). All in all, I'm back where I started. Thanks EA, you're now 0 for 4 for troubleshooting games over chat (four f*****g games!). Uninstalling origin.
Just keep on trying until you get a helpful advisor! The steps I posted are the solution for your problem guys. Do not waste time with their troubleshooting methods. They are useless
Tim you were right! It took a little while but round 2 with another advisor (someone really helpful) was able to walk me through it and get me set up. He removed the game copy with no code ( the one i downloaded from the game store in Origin) and replaced it with a copy with a key. he said "they can freely replace them since it's a legacy game" So good news is it works like a charm now. I just need to do some major tweaking with the resoultion, but he got it working.
