Damn it, I found out what the issue was. After trying various newer and newer packages of wine for my distro (Arch) I realized all of them worked... then I remembered that my 'standard' wine package which I was using all the while had patches for WC, including one which dealt with keyboard focus.... Anyway, my bad. Vanilla wine does not display this issue for me (though it also does not allow for WC3 hosting, but one thing at a time). Sorry to waste your time James.
