JASA, eh? Care to say which member you were? (It's nothing bad, I promise )
@AtomicDP: Mods are server side so you never have to download full releases of mods unless you want to host your own server. The only things that are a part of mods that you might need are certain client side plugins that enable some extra features of the mod on your end but, nothing like that would ever prevent you from connecting to a server or even finding servers to connect to.
The only thing I can say is make sure your games are patched to the latest versions. Outcast is at 1.04 and Academy is 1.01. If your game wasn't updated then that could explain why you couldn't find any servers.