I figured it out.
It was a few things.
1. I had to add an "Allow" under client connections i think? On my Exchange 2010 server. I block all connections to the Exchange server except the ones I specify (scan to email printers, temp monitor in my server closet, websites that use my mail server for outgoing alerts etc).
2. Using the correct port for pop mail. It was 110 in my case - my knee-jerk reaction to mail settings is port 25.
3. Check the box under "general settings" that says something about Cron in it. Once i enabled this, it fetched tickets from the support exchange account i had setup. BUT i'd have to be logged into the admin console for it to grab new emails and generate new tickets.
4. I setup a simple task scheduler to run the Cron service which initiates the POP fetch on my exchange server. I thought the website would have done this automagically, but you have to use this mentioned task scheduler. Its simple. Create a scheduled task that runs every 5 minutes, and runs cron.php. (First, you must be sure that PHP is the default program to open all php files - right click open with - find php.exe and set as default program). This lets you skip a step and i stumbled on it accidentally. (Other guides i found directed you to create a scheduled task for php.exe and then run cron.php).
So now every 5 minutes, it'll check for new tickets. 5 min is the shortest frequency for task scheduler - I want it to be instant, so i'm going to look up how to get this cron.php file to run as a service next.
Or i suppose you could create a second task scheduler and try to get the two to stagger every 5 minutes. so it'd effectively be every 2.5 min.
weee i love IT.