So here’s the weird thing now. I tried registering on the site with different email addresses; including hotmail, gmail, yahoo, ones I host, and ones hosted at various hosting companies. None of them receive and email. If I grab the activation key from the database and manually type in the activation URL, then that user is activated and then sent the activation email, along with any followup emails.
I had two friends try it, and it worked perfectly for both of them.
I got a hosting account the other day with asmallorange just to play with buddypress, so I’m not able to check the mail logs without submitting a support ticket to their tech support, so I have no clue whether the emails in question are actually leaving the server.