My experience was basically everything you wrote here except I didn't care enough to find out that there was a way to pay to play. I just wrote it off until I finally got the email saying my account was live. If it had gone on much longer, I dare say I'd have just blown it all off. My problem, and the reason I tried to make a "new" new account was my phone didn't receive the code, at all, until I tried to send it again a few days later. Then it was another week or so before I got the email.
There is definitely the risk of people losing interest if the problem is not, somehow, solved. Perhaps asking for volunteers to approve the process, and speed it up, is an answer. Trusted people with a vested interest in the site would be best for that job, I do believe. Or maybe there's little interest in actually fixing it, with the logic being that if you aren't excited and into it enough to wait, then you probably won't stick around anyway?