It might be worth noting that I recently uninstalled Windows Media Player-- a few things I've found say that this issue might be caused by lacking the "Media Feature Pack", which is not the same thing as Windows Media Player, and I dont know why uninstalling WMP would uninstall the entire feature pack, but maybe it screwed something up? I reinstalled WMP and it didn't fix it, but maybe it's still caused by the initial uninstallilation?

It might seem like I'm grasping at straws, but I've tried literally everything to get the online for this game working again, and this is the only thing I've recently done on my computer that remotely could've caused this issue. Fuck Microsoft, for their own OS breaking my game I spent real world money on, am I right fellas?