My experience, offered as penance: I haven’t yet validated my email address.
Prior to this recent update, I would submit my password, it would be accepted, and I would ignore the “Validate Your E-mail Address” reminder and proceed to click the “Play” button. And I would get to play the game, which is what I wanted.
It appears that this update has disabled the “Play” button until “Validate…” has been dealt with, one way or the other. So the launch dialog sits there looking like something is hanging after downloading the update, until I click the “Cancel” button. At that point, I get a welcome message and a bunch of update notes that I can ignore, and a now ENABLED play button that I can click.
What a crock of kitten.
Free consulting to the usability team at ANet: “Stop making more work for the support team, they catch enough kitten as it is!”