@holger1405 Very different tastes, yes. I will say it was good for its soundtrack, I like listening to that when I'm writing sometimes 🙂 I had a look at some Andromeda videos, but it upset me somewhat too. So not sure if I'll ever follow any more new Mass Effect releases, but I'm very happy with my fanfiction writing and replaying the first two games 😃
Thank you for escalating the problem with the EA CMs. I've been active over in this Sims 3 thread where they seem to be having the same issue, and not only that, I've found someone getting the same message with Mirror's Edge, and a very similar message with Spore. Something all these games share is that they're on the same list for this authorization system. There's also now this post by beerxced79000 in the Sims 3 forum, which may be a possible place for EA to look for help pinpointing this issue?
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EDIT / UPDATE: Following beerxced79000's post on the Sims 3 post for this issue, someone has mannaged to get their game to authorize by copying the 'paul.dll' file from one of their expansion pack files to the base game's files. So, the source of this problem seems to be the 'paul.dll' file, which I can confirm is also in the Mass Effect files (found under the 'binaries' file of the game install). The 'paul.dll' seems to be the file that connects the authorization system on our computers to the license server, and the version that deals with our old games currently is 'blocked' from connecting to the servers. I know nothing about how servers work, but at a guess, if EA has been doing some server work, is it possible they've changed something and accidently broken that link that 'paul.dll' connects to?
(For the record, I did just try copying my 'paul.dll' file from one of my own Sims 3 expansion files to my Mass Effect files, and it just told me to reinstall the game, so I guess the .dll files are coded for the specific games. But it was worth a try, nice to see a different error message 😉 )
@holger1405 Can you pass this information along to the CMs please, if they're not already aware? If it can get to the people working on a fix, hopefully it'll help to pinpoint the exact cause further 🙂 Beerxced79000's post is probably the most detailed information we've got so far, they've mentioned the different versions of the 'paul.dll' that're working, if that helps too.
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IMPORTANT NOTE: The following does not work for Mass Effect installs on Origin.
SECOND EDIT / IMPORTANT UPDATE: I've got Mass Effect working! Thanks to a second post from @beerxced79000. I needed to copy both my 'paul.dll' file AND my 'winui.dll' file, as the two are linked to work properly (after making backups of Mass Effect's versions of these files. If anyone tries this DO NOT copy over or delete the original files, always keep a back up. For more detailed information, check out page 5 of this Sims 3 thread). The game starts up fine, my saves load up fine, looks like my dlc are in and working 😃
HOWEVER, and I really want to stress this, especially to EA. This is a work around. There's going to be people who don't have these other files to use, I'm lucky that I also happen to have Sims 3 installed, and that the files ended up cooperating. The issue is not fixed, and I am more than certain it's on EA's end at this point. Something is broken in the servers and needs fixing, and I'm not considering this issue solved until I know that it has been properly sorted out.
