I started a new game in space with my Spawans so I didn't have to make a species again, then deleted the original Spawan file. (It's quite funny, actually. The planet goes BOOM. hehe.) When I checked what I was, I was a shaman. This may be because it was a race that would have been a Shaman, had I continued with the original file.

What do you guys think?

Did you start the game using your creature dressed from Civ stage?  If you look closely at these Sporepedia cards they actually show the traits of the creature in the earlier stages.  My guess is these traits are carried over to your other game, giving you a Shaman instead of a Wanderer.  I haven't seen the traits on anyone else's creatures though, so you probably have to make it yourself in order to gain the benefit.

@OP: This is really weird.  I am so excited to do all of those things like terraforming and collecting, but I have NO desire to fight in the Space stage at all.  AT ALL.  AT ALL.  If you played as a peaceful herbivore, I find it very upsetting that you were forced into endless mind-numbing battles.  I haven't played the game yet because I live in the U.S., but I can be certain that I will not want to address ten different problems every 3 minutes.  Neither will any of the girls I know who played the Sims and are tentatively considering getting Spore (which I think Maxis should be much more concerned about than what I think).  All that said, I have confidence that Maxis will listen to what everyone is saying and create a patch to fix these issues, because the Maxis team is very dedicated and actually cares a lot about this community.  I hope that whatever fix they come up with will allow me to go about my peaceful life and never fight anyone in Space at all.  That is the story I want to create, and Spore is about creating our own stories.

EDIT: @WeAreLegion: This sounds like a reasonable theory to me.  However, I don't think invisible triggers should be allowed to shift the game experience to the point where it is no longer fun.  Since we have heard multiple very strongly voiced complaints about this, it seems to be a real issue.  Also, to the Maxis people here, I trust you to fix the issue... you guys are doing a wonderful job!  Don't be discouraged by these few issues, because the whole game is clearly a masterwork.

Alter Ego's Alter Ego
Achieve Master Badge level 10 as ALL 10 archetypes

I'm curious... how do the archetypes actually work?  Can they change as you play in Space or are they based more on your earlier decisions?  And do they give you special abilities?

Also, 45,000 stars is a ridiculously huge number.  I can't even imagine visiting all of these.  Honestly, if no one had said there were less stars, I doubt anyone would have figured it out even after a few years of play.  In a game of GalCiv2 if you play with a gigantic galaxy there are probably 250 stars.  In Freelancer you can visit about 50 stars.  I know Spore has entirely different gameplay from these two games, but 45,000 just isn't even in the same class.  Put aside your built-up expectations and you will come to realize that what Spore does deliver is amazing.

Honestly, this seems like a very poor design choice.  People who want to play aggressively should still be able to have fun, especially on Easy or even Normal.  I think 1 to 3 minutes is an extremely short interval to be attacked in a game when you are a single ship off doing important things--I can't imagine playing Freelancer and having to defend a planet every few minutes.  Especially because this game is designed for mainstream gamers, it sounds like the issue should be addressed right away.

EDIT: I don't really know though.  I haven't played yet, and I'll reserve judgment for now.  However, it is suspicious that multiple people have complained.  Anyway, I'll play socially, so it won't affect me too much.

In the Spore Prima Guide free sample, which covers the Cell stage, there is a screenshot of an epic cell with that same mouth.  Look on page 10 of the guide to find it.  I'm not sure what this means, but it's definitely the same part.

As I said - this does not exactly proof that he is lying but it definitely makes the whole thing more suspicious. It's weird though, because he did post the 'yoshi' picture as requested which would be difficult to photoshop. If someone finds pictures that are similar to the ones he posted (ex. exact same background but no yoshis) than that would be definite proof. And, anyways, lying or not about the picture, he clearly is wrong about the number of planets available which makes the rest of his posts much less credible, to say the least.

You are right of course, we can't really be sure he is lying.  I do tend to think his images are fake though, if not just because the rest of what he says makes no sense at all.

If you check the Exif data for his images (usually read from the properties of the image file) you'll find that these images were opened and last saved in photoshop. Now, granted, this is not proof that he manipulated the image as it might be that he pasted the image in photoshop and saved them from there, but I'm sure most people wouldn't use photoshop to do that kind of operation and instead use paint or another lightweight image editor.

Good detective work!  So now we can be sure that he is lying.

Wow, those videos were awesome.  I loved seeing the timeline at the very end of the Cell stage.  Now we know all the carnivore powers from Creature to Space: Raging Roar, Traps, Invulnerability, and Power Monger.  Power Monger is the first power I've seen that will be available in Space, and it said it will increase the effectiveness of all weapons.  It's cool how something so tiny will affect a huge empire millions of years later.