Spore without the internet?

[Munch]

I'm thinking of getting Spore for my sister but she doesn't have the internet. I know a large part of the game is the "massively single player online" thing where you download other peoples' creations. Is it worth playing if you aren't online?

 

[Leonel]

It can be but you miss out on other peoples stuff, some of which is really good quality!

But in any case, you need the internet at first to activate the game. After that one activation, you can play it without the internet.

 

[Munch]

It can be but you miss out on other peoples stuff, some of which is really good quality!

But in any case, you need the internet at first to activate the game. After that one activation, you can play it without the internet.

So you can't even begin to play without having an internet connection?

 

[Rub'Rum]

So you can't even begin to play without having an internet connection?

No, you can't. You need to activate the game online at least once.

I personally think the surprises coming from other people's creations popping up in my game are at least 50% of the fun I might have had with the game.

 

[Abaddon]

Yeah, seeing random creations is good... but it annoys me seeing stupidly named stuff, or odd looking things that break the immersion.

 

[Ball Lightning]

No, you can't. You need to activate the game online at least once.

I personally think the surprises coming from other people's creations popping up in my game are at least 50% of the fun I might have had with the game.

You can sort of play the game with out the internet, we installed it on one of our computers which only had dial up (someone was using he phone at the time) and it still worked fine, but we signed up before we got through the cell stage, so there might be a game restriction if you have no internet.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Yeah, seeing random creations is good... but it annoys me seeing stupidly named stuff, or odd looking things that break the immersion.

Yeah, I had downloaded a "famous characters" package (like batman and the Simpsons, Darth Vader and Alien) and quickly realized how stupid that was and deleted all of them. It's just not right for the game's mood. Weird names are kind of annoying too but what can we expect, hehe.

 

[Paulwe]

I have internet, but to experiment I played without registering. You can play the cell stage, but cannot go further.

 

[drzoidberg]

I bought Spore on EA downloader, which is a total . .. .. .. . product since it runs in the background.

Anyway, I didn't know it installed Securom, which it did. This is an incredibly serious breach of customer trust. It's so badly written, it basically acts as a virus at random and Securom gets its nose in everything you do... which slows all your applications down.

Other peoples creatures are fun. I'll give them that.

And I didn't think other peoples created buildings were any good. Most of them are just bits thrown together at random without anybody bothering to paint it. I'd love to NOT browse through all that . .. .. .. .. And every time you go to a new planet it forgets the style you had previously, so after a few planets I just click any of the building randomly... and it has no impact on the game.

This long rant leads up to that I nuked Spore. To get rid of Securom I had to reinstall Windows from scratch... yay... I just feel violated. And when I reinstalled Spore I installed the pirated version. I'm no friend of computer piracy... but I paid for Spore. I think I've got a right to play it without . .. .. .. .ing up my computer.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I can vouch for the whole game being playable 'offline'. But I did have to activate Spore online. And, although I wasn't automatically downloading stuff due to being offline, I did already have a load of stuff to play with, as I'd spent some time downloading the creations of forumers here (using the buddy system).

 

[Catharsis]

I don't have an account, so that probably counts as 'offline'. So I only get Maxis creatures and whatever I copied into the Creatures folder from CFC.

It's still playable, and you know all the creatures you get are going to be of relatively good quality (no SPorn, or eight-legged dots with names like 'lolwut') but it's probably more interesting to play it online.

 

[Oerdin]

No, you can't. You need to activate the game online at least once.

I personally think the surprises coming from other people's creations popping up in my game are at least 50% of the fun I might have had with the game.

There are... er, unofficial patches which fix that problem.

 

[Munch]

I don't have an account, so that probably counts as 'offline'. So I only get Maxis creatures and whatever I copied into the Creatures folder from CFC.

It's still playable, and you know all the creatures you get are going to be of relatively good quality (no SPorn, or eight-legged dots with names like 'lolwut') but it's probably more interesting to play it online.

It seems from other comments that an internet connection is required to install the game. Did you manage to install without the internet?

 

[Daftpanzer]

I have the same thing - If you're offline at startup, you don't log in to your proper account name. Your creations are attribtued to a default name, which in my case was the name of my computer's user account. It doesn't seem to affect anything else, though!

I was online the first time I launched the game, and presumably all the authentication stuff happened automatically. I've been online a couple of other times to download things through the in-game sharing system. But for actually playing the game, I've been offline pretty much all the time.

I've not noticed any problems playing different saved worlds etc whether they were started offline or not.

 

[Gelion]

Can you buy (download) the game from internet?

 

[Daftpanzer]

I read that others have done that from the EA site, though there are sometimes problems with corrupt downloads and patches not working, or the game not authenticating, etc. It seems a bit dodgy to me.

 

[Gelion]

I guess I better try to store. Thanks!