I've been waiting for Spore too. It's taken them forever to get the game out.
Seems that recently much of Maxis resources have been geared towards this 'character creator'. Just hope that doens't take away from the game it's self.
I've waited too long at this point and am just not that excited about it anymore. Cripes, I think it was two or three years ago it won awards for best pre-release game at E3.