Ok find the solution through trial and error. This really needs to be in the wiki so I will do that a little later today.
Here's how to not fix, but make it so it doesn't matter any more.
All of the tutorials on how to setup a 7.0 server fail to mention that you must have a fully populated eqemu_config.xml file. They tell you that you have to edit the one that is created for you when you run the DR 3.52 installer.
So, to fix the issue of where a player clicks on the server to go to character select/creation and it just dumps them back to the log in screen fully populate the eqemu_config.xml file according to these instructions:
http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka...rConfiguration
There will be some changes that are not exactly the same for every server so you will have to know where the changes are specific to your server only.
With this fully populated xml file I was able to create both a public server and a private server and have no problems with new clients logging in from outside of my network.
You will still get the unknown opcode error each time someone logs in, but it does nothing that I can see. Everything works fine.
Again, I'll update the wiki on the 7.0 guide to reflect this a little later today.
-BFC