What affected the most new users is the lack of other new users. Before, when you started, there was many other newcomers to compete with. It's not the case anymore.
What you say is true, but even if you join a low league - like I did in Utopia, there is no fun in starting out. Its a huge drag until you win your first game. We discussed many times that newbies need like 1-3 seasons of pure bot bashing to remain interested long enough before they get gangbanged by grandfathered teams. You can't even buy a player (except scrubs) these days as a new team.
I do agree on the fact that there is a fear of big changes (even though Utopia was one, no matter how it's presented and I think it was/is a success). However, any gripe that an user have about BB will suddenly become the biggest reason people are leaving according to that user. We saw that with the discussion about micro-merging and many other changes. What's happening is the fear to lose a lot of users, before possibly gaining more than what was lost, and thus slowly losing some is the default choice.
In my opinion the way it goes its a business decision - the way the game is running the profit is decreasing, but seems to be a better choice than investing some money and redsigning a game. Basically the cow will be milked until death. Okay.
Not merging nations because a handful of users from micronations went buckwild is a bad move. From a business standpoint those nations never contributed financially. So losing them is really no risk. As there is no comparable game to BB, there is no risk losing the players to a competitor either. So even if sb. is pissed with such a move, whether or not he/she quits or not makes no difference.
Größter Knecht aller Zeiten aka His Excellency aka President for Life aka Field Marshal Al Hadji aka Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas aka aka Conqueror of the Buzzerbeater Empire in Europe in General and Austria in Particular