when the black screen appears, do you hear sound as if you're logged in? very odd about the black screen situation.
It would make it seem it's a grafic issue. did you run autopatch first? you have to run it a few times to install the remaining items and then run the play aplication.
I already did, my friend who lives near me aswell is having issues, when I used a VPN I saw a loading bar stuck half way so it look as if we were being prevented from logging it "IP wise".