I been having some trouble with Origin and being offline and I was curious to find out about any suggestions or story's about this topic. This summer we have been having some work done on the house and the internet goes out once in a while. The first time it went out I went to play Kingdoms of Amalur and it I was able to load up the game but was not able to play my game. I got a message saying DLC could not be authorized, so I had to start a new game if i wanted to play, even though I already had 20 hrs into the game.

The second time happened today, my WiFi went out and I tried to play Mass Effect 3 and Origin said I had to log in for the first time, even though I had my password saved , but obviously I couldn't play. I know when other clients start up with no internet they just go into offline mode such as Steam and Spotify.

I played Mass Effect 3 offline just fine. You have to go online once, authorize your DLC, then put Origin in offline mode just like Steam.

Does origin need to be running in offline mode, or can i put it in offline mode and shut it off till I am ready to play?

I shut it down and turned it back on after the fact and it stayed offline, worked fine. I legitimately had no internet though, not sure that matters.

Alright thanks I will keep Origin in offline mode always and see if that helps, but I am still baffled at Kingdom of Amalur, I had played my game over 20 hrs and when I was offline it wouldn't let me play my saved game.

ME3 does that too, it seems to be that if you're in online mode it requires a connection to authorize everything, and to load a save that uses stuff that needs authorized. It's a little worse than Steam, which is like 50/50 on whether stuff works when you lose a connection in online mode.

Honestly since I don't care about achievements anyway I just keep both in offline mode at all times and only go online to buy or patch something.

Disable your network connection entirely. Like Steam, Origin checks for an internet connection when it starts up. If you're connected to a network that doesn't actually have access to the internet you'll be locked out of any saves with DLC because the DLC failed to make the handshake it insists on making every fucking time you start the game up with a network connection... However, unlike Steam, when there is no actual network it'll simply ask you to "login" and you'll have access to everything except the multiplayer. Unlike the blatant lie that is Steam's "Offline Mode" the one in Origin has functioned 100% of the time for me. Though I'm sure that's something EA will "fix" in the future...