They've already closed down stuff for NFS Rivals. I used to keep my stats at http://nfstimes.com/rivals/pc/roadabuser but many features are already offline as you can see. You'll probably be able to play in offline mode but that's not so much fun when you can't even make stats.
I hope this helped clarifying, I know it didn't help you in looking forward to play the game. Hopefully you didn't pay too much, maybe you can get a refund since EA states when you don't like a game you can return it. But how that works, I do not (yet) know.
