It wasn't really a very impressive sample size and it's now well over two years old.
Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iraqattacksasofjuly2006.JPG
The number of attacks in March 2004 is dwarfed by the current number of attacks in Iraq. Do you think the Iraqi peoples'...
Red Orchestra is superb. Check it out now while it's free. You might not think much of the public servers, but the Iron Crescendo tournament offers excellent cooperative play. IC is free and open to everyone, and after playing in it, I rarely play in public servers any more. They just don't compare.
I take it the ol' restart Steam fix worked for you? Yeah, feel free to have a go at hosting a server. From the Arcade mode it looks like this game is a whole lot of fun that I didn't know about.
EDIT: Aw. What about the IP for direct joining?