recourse

attention mysterious forum admin man! The problem was exactly that. The old Mcafee client from when I was in college was still doing some funky things, had to search around for a way to run the forced uninstall. As soon as I was able to do so it connected immediately. 

I appreciate your patience and your help, hopefully this may be able to help others in the future!

I still have an old version of like mcafee or whatever that was required with my colleges vpn client. I will try uninstalling anything associated with that off to see if it makes a difference

I still have the original cd's from back in the day so the game came straight off that install.

I havent the slightest idea, both running win 7 (one ultimate the other not). I do not have either of those programs installed and as far as I can tell the computer that I am actually trying to use has less garbage programs as I have removed anything that was unneeded.

When I installed the game on the alternative pc I was able to install the game--> install the launcher--> install the patch--> log on successfully. There was literally no other steps such as the changing the options file, etc.

Its been a bit, but I have tried it on another pc and it connected without issue which seems like it rules out the router (technically that pc is connected to a wifi range extender which is connected to the router but I think that is negligible?). Now that I have obviously done something stupid in setting this up on this pc, what kind of options should I be checking/solutions are there?