I think it's hard for players who have been hyper competitive and dedicated to the game for a long time to actually understand why new players don't play pvp, or at least ranked pvp.
I have a large group of friends, and a few guilds full of people very active in GW2. Everytime I ask them to play pvp or ranked I get some variation of 2 answers.
1. They can't play with more than one other friend/guildmate. Ranked anxiety is real and not having the option to play with your friends who you know won't flame you is a huge downside. Sure, you could say just 5 man queue unranked but the rewards for unranked are next to nothing, waste of time gold/progression wise. I KNOW that I could've gotten a few more people into pvp if we could've grouped as a 5 man within the guild and still get decent rewards or legendary progression while chilling with friends.
2. They aren't good and people are toxic. They just get instantly pounded into the dirt by players who've been playing much longer than them, and subsequently flamed into oblivion. I know this is a population issue where most of the players still here are vets, but if I could take my friends or guild mates along in a 5 stack then they wouldn't have to worry about the vitriol thrown at them by teammates and learn the game mode least.