Ok... I tried everything... what finally fixed my problem, at least for now, was uninstalling and then installing on a different hard drive. Thay may not help everyone, but maybe it'll help someone. Hopefully it'll keep this from happening again in the future? Fingers crossed.

I really wish you would fix this though, Plarium. Tons of people are having similar problems every time you update. If I did not really like this game I would not have bothered. As it is I spent most of my day trying to fix this. As I know you can understand, loosing that much of my precious weekend is rather annoying... 

Please fix this so that we don't all have to go through this next update. You will lose players if you don't.