Ultimately, there is a disconnect between new players and the communities they could be a part of. This happens at multiple important junctures in the game. The most obvious place is with recruitment, but let's start from the beginning:
Just a Nation Simulation Game
When a new (potential) player first finds NationStates, their first idea what the game is about happens on the homepage:
NationStates is a nation simulation game. Create a nation according to your political ideals and care for its people. Or deliberately oppress them. It's up to you.
From the get-go, there is no indication whatsoever that there is any multiplayer aspect, or what that might entail. This is certainly a great description for the issues side of the game, but there are so many other parts of the game that this description doesn't quite do the game justice.
To be clear, I am not proposing the hook text for NS should be changed - after all, there are other ways to introduce multiplayer. The problem is when players first step into the world, they are instantly blind-sided by a barrage of requests from other players to participate in a side of the game that, before then, they had no concept of. For some players this is fine. For others this is a violation of expectations that sours their first moments on the site.
The rest of a player's first potentially negative experiences with multiplayer proceed from here. They are barriers that keep them from learning about, taking interest in, or being able to find a community where they will fit in.
Person or Pawn?
The first of these obstacles is how recruiters often treat new players as a means to an end. This is especially true of gameplayers (myself included), but can also be true of others. A lot of players with the skills and resources to recruit are more interested in getting support for an in-game agenda than building a community. This isn't necessarily bad, but it means recruitment is a cutthroat, all-or-nothing, no-holds barred free-for-all where new players are the prize.
This is no more evident than in the first telegram a new player ever receives from another player: feeder welcome telegrams. Sedge already addressed this issue, so I won't get too much into it here, but it does illustrate the point. GCRs are large founderless regions that are periodically the target of coups. Anything they can do to keep up WA endorsements contributes to their security, and gives them more power in the WA. Given this, they have an enormous incentive to dissuade new players from leaving. Is it any surprise they tell new players to so swiftly mute every other voice competing for their attention?
And UCRs play the same game. They want new players to boost their region's power in the WA, conscript in their military, or contribute activity that will attract even more players and stroke the founders' ego. The primary concern is not always the community itself, as the community may just be a means to an end.
This isn't to say recruitment is actively malicious (far from it) but that the regions most invested in recruitment are not necessarily the best-suited communities for new players. I don't expect this to change. In fact, given that this is a political game, it is fitting. But we must recognize the detrimental effect this has on new players.
A Cacophony of Voices
This brings us to the next obvious problem, which is that many players find recruitment spam annoying. What better way to dissuade new players from getting involved in the more engaging aspects of the game than by representing all of it with literal spam? Let's also not forget these are new players with very little context for what a region is or why they should care. We obviously care a lot about recruitment because we have goals related to the game. But many players just want to run a little nation simulation and simply do not have the time, patience, or knowhow to make an informed decision about what region to join.
Where is everyone?
The last problem is the difficulty faced by new players who want to go out on their own and find a region to join. These would be the players who catch on to the idea of multiplayer, and care enough to look around on their own.
Finding active, engaging communities is hard for a new player. If it's your first time looking around the site, it's easy to miss the things that are second-nature for those of us who have played for a while. From what I can tell, there are two paths a new player might take to find a new region on their own:
1. Go to "The World" Page
This is the more accessible option, but it isn't very friendly to a new player trying to find a region. You are greeted by the featured region, a list of the top 10 nations in the WA census, and a box showing world activity. The featured region is at least a region, but nothing else on the page directly helps with finding a region.
If the player is willing to carefully read the little text at the top (not something users like doing, by the way), there is a possibility they will figure out that clicking the text that says "##,### regions" might help them. Unfortunately, this page is also useless, due to 99% of regions being one-nation trophy regions with ugly WFE's their owner doesn't actually intend to do anything with. This makes the world outside the feeders look dead and uninviting.
"Ah," I hear you say "but they can use the tag cloud!". True, they could. But (a) it's at the bottom of the page, and (b) it isn't obvious how to use (WTF does "P2TM" mean?). A new player is far more likely to use the drop-down menu to try and re-sort the regions by some other world census, because it's at the top and just looks less intimidating. The result? Another 10 regions of absolutely zero value to them.
2. Click the "Tired of life in %%REGION%%?" Button
This button is a little harder to find. However it does point the user to a list of the larger regions, which is a good start. The problem is this list is quite selective, and only includes the largest regions in the game. If the player wants to get out of whatever feeder they started in, this isn't the greatest starting point. It makes the game look overcrowded. Oh and by the way, the "Found a new region!" button is the largest and most prominent on this page, so it's not unlikely a player who cared enough to get this far will inadvertently cause their own demise by isolating themselves in a small region they naively thought other people would be eager to join.
Basically, it's really hard for a new player to (on their own) find regions that are not either dead, or massive, or both. I don't discount there are those who successfully navigate the system and find what they're looking for, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that is the typical result. The system is too unwieldy. It's not clear how to find what you're looking for. And the perception of players is easily warped so they have an inaccurate picture of game activity, which may play a factor in their decision to continue playing.
Conclusion
This is by no means the whole story of new players in NS. These are just the problems I've seen and have awareness of. In general, it is difficult for a new player to be matched with a community they like. This is harmful to both regions and players, and ultimately to the game as a whole. I specifically have not brought up any solutions here: this is a complex issue with many angles to take. But perhaps with some thought we can find some solutions to these problems, and retain more of the players that make this game what it is.