I already warn everyone before they submit applications that we're slow, so I don't think that's a surprise for anyone. Even the age of the RP isn't too daunting because they only really need to know the high level story and the current ark. The real problem, as I see it, is why should torva, hagumi, neon, shade,garran,etc, etc even talk to someone new at this point? Half of them would say "piss off" if someone just walked up to them and started talking, and the other half would assume the person is probably a spy. This makes it inherently difficult for a new player to get involved with others, which in turn means I have to keep providing NPC interactions with them. In my experience the best way to introduce new players is to make them have some piece of critical information that's core to the plot, but even then if I do it too often we get this revolving door of revelations coming from random people we keep bumping in to, which isn't good either. It's just a difficult situation overall, but this is certainly my first time in an RP that's this old, as I'm sure is true of others, so in many ways we're treading on new ground.