I can’t log in to the game.

I have almost the same problem: the original game worked fine, then suddenly... it stopped. On the splash screen, the Windows mouse cursor appears, and there's an "error" sound, followed by 10 minutes of "neither here nor there" (it doesn't start or shut down). But if you persistently click on the error icon on the blue bar at the bottom, the screen darkens, and eventually the game starts. Shutting it down is normal afterward. What should I do about this?