[rudeboy88]

So here's some of what I've done with troubleshooting the issue :

-remade the account that gives permissions, both as it's stated in the current guide and again as a root copy, temporarily gave myself access to ensure the pw was right, set it back to the eoc IP only.

-made sure port 3306 was forwarded to my vbox's IP. I can both play on my server and access it via phpmyadmin from outside of my house.

-along with java and cookies I made sure I do not have any adware software installed on my browser. Tried in both Chrome and Mozilla, no adware software is installed.

-looked up my current public ip online every time I have tried to connect to ensure its correct

-made sure my ISP did not use CGNAT

-updated Virtualbox, installed updates on Windows

Although I didn't think it a likely solution, I also tried

-making an exception in Windows firewall
-temporarily disabling the Windows firewalls

I get the impression I've missed something simple in my configuration, or that perhaps my configuration has some preventative measure built in that I'm missing?