Uhm. No there's not a ton of new content waiting for AoB review. It's true that there are some thing waiting to be reviewed, but we're talking months, not years. The major things that are being developed currently and that are in various states of review is the Ravenloft domain and the School of High Magic guild. Both are obviously pretty big things and just as it takes a long time to develop it, it also takes a long time to review it. The AoB team has recently been expanded with a new member in order to handle the workload better, which is great. Finding wizards who has the skill and will to be on any admin team is hard, and the AoB team is perhaps that team that requires the most.
And it's not that we dont want more people in admin teams, but actually not many wizards want to have that sort of responsibility, and even if we can find people who want to take on the responsibility most wizards do not have the technical skill needed for the AoB team, or other very technical positions. The only way to solve this is to recruit more wizards, but it's a slow process. The uptick in players that started a few years ago is just now starting to show in the wizard ranks, since we now have a handful of wizards from the "new generation" of players, and the more players we get, the more wizards we will get in the future.
Of course, just as many new players who try the game does not stick around, many new wizards who try being a wizard does not stay either. That's just the nature of things. Genesis is a hard game with a steep learning curve, and being a wizard is too. We do our best to make things as easy as possible for new wizards, but in the end it requires a lot of time, energy and motivation from the wizard if they are going to succeed, especially if you have little or no coding experience. Learning to code on your own is no easy task. But the wizard ranks ARE growing, just like the player numbers are. And in time it should also, hopefully, lead to more wizards on admin teams. But it's a pretty long path from being a new player in Genesis to becoming a member of the AoB team, we cant just grab anyone from the street and put them on an admin team right away.
As for the madwand thing, well, as others have said, that basically how it works now? Anyone can create a new char, apply to become a wiz, and keep their mortals. Which basically was the madwand concept anyway?