AFAIK you should be able to connect with Direct IP. Did you try through Steam? (I thought the only restriction was with buying the game, for regional prices, not playing)
The global chat is already non-Steam.
Please email supportdos@larian.com, with a description of the problem and the report.zip file generated by the
D:OS support tool, for both systems. The report will contain network information, which should hopefully help Larian determine the problem. It also contains any saves you have, which (since they are not relevant in this case) can be deleted from the zip to reduce the file size, if necessary/applicable.
