If you have problems connecting by IP address, you may need to set up port forwarding in your router (or try connecting directly to your modems, at least for character creation).
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The game's client will try to assign a port in the range 23243-23252, the server in the range 23253-23262. While forwarding these ports on your gateway might help, there is no guarantee the gateway will assign an external port in this range when connecting to our NATPunch server (this is the port that will be assumed to be the external port for all connections).
Hopefully the Server ID will be added to the character creation screen, but until then (or GOG Galaxy is released), the only options are IP address or LAN in combination with VPN software (like Hamachi or Tunngle).