Ok.. I finally figured it out.. There's a number of things to tweak if you cannot connect to the server..

1. Uninstall AVG if you have it.. or any of the other blacklisted AV programs, which can be found in the setup guide found in this forum.
2. Completely Disable Windows Defender AND Windows ...

I run Vista.. I tried everything for about 2 days.. couldn't get it to work.. then last night i finally got rid of AVG, and i connected instantly.. I was thrilled.. Until today, when i tried to play and i keep getting some "connection taking too long to respond, hit ESC to cancel" error... when i ...

And I played for hours with no probs.. i left my comp. on overnight.. and got up this morning, tried to connect, and i get this error saying "operation is taking too long, press ESC", so when i press ESC, i get the standard "cannot connect, server was interrupted, may be due to connection settings ...

After hours of trying to figure out how to connect to the online servers i finally figured it out... AVG is no good anymore.. I tried disabling everything i could in AVG and using every other trick i could think of but nothing fixed it. Finally I uninstalled AVG, and voila! Connected instantly...