As for the "special characters" not being allowed, there is a sane and logical reason behind this (but whether or not EA's developers had this in mind will rema

As for the "special characters" not being allowed, there is a sane and logical reason behind this (but whether or not EA's developers had this in mind will remain unanswered): the ASCII set is intuitively and easily available from any keyboard setup and locale in the world. Using special characters in your login/password, characters perhaps only available through your specific locale and keyboard - people living abroad knows this problem well - puts users in the situation of not being able to access the implied service if they happen to need to when away from their personal computer, unless they know how to summon and use an IME - something not many "ordinary" users know, trust me on that one. It is my personal opinion that a user should never have to end up in this situation just because he or she isn't savvy enough. The benefit of allowing characters outside the ASCII range is obvious to most people, but the problem that comes with it seems like something no one ever thinks about.