Yeah, that's always the key problem. You need people playing in order to get people to play.
As well as getting people to play, you need to stop scaring them off.
I was at a full 9-seat ring game earlier. Something weird happened, and one-by-one over half the players started showing up as "disconnected". I found myself sat out with "wait for big blind" auto-checked. Half the table sat out, a few people left their seats, and the game fell apart.
It's critical to iron out whatever is causing these random disconnections because nobody wants to have their hand ruined by technical troubles.