if you think there are not many players on, and your raiding is in trouble because people are not showing up...

You are not imaging it. According to the player activity chart for all realms for the last year at WarcraftRealms.com, player activity is at or below the level it was pre-expansion where not many were raiding because they had done it all.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyactivity.php?serverid=-1

There are indeed many reasons players are starting to feel bored with the content.

For me and my guild, the difficulty of entry level raiding is causing many to turn away from the game. We struggle at this point to barely get a ten man going, and when we do, we constantly have to ask different players to heal, since healing is an extremely stressful proposition now days.

Having an inconsistent heal core turn up each week is not a good thing. We've been able to slowly make our way past Magmaw, Omnotron and Halfus, but took a step back on our last raid when the raiders asked to heal weren't up to the task. We spent three grueling hours wiping nonstop to Magmaw, a fight we thought was safely on farm at this point.

Going from an extremely accessible, casual raid environment into something that isn't is making a lot of players feel kind of jaded. A lot of people I've spoken to are hoping the 353 gear from ZA/ZG helps things out, but for many, the damage being done while we wait for things to get better is causing quite a few guilds to break up.

Agree. I also think one of the biggest mistakes was making ICC totally not worth running for the 3-4 months that Cata has been out. During that time all my raiders got out of the raiding habit, developed some bad 5 man habits, lost interest in their main (due to class changes mostly), or just quit the game entirely. I understand why, since the Cata Plan killed our AoE abilities to the point that ICC mechanics don't work with now, but it would have been nice to have had a guild "team building" raid night still for the last few months.

Some other issues are guildies that hate questing so they will take forever to gear since they aren't getting rep in any timely fashion either. Player made gear could be more useable, but at least we got cloth and plate gear. They really should change the name from Professions to Hobbies to comply with Azaroth Tax Code - I mean there is no profit.

On the raiding, my little guild is finally getting back to it. So far we have only finished BH, and that is killing the raid environment. I know we suck. We have run at Magmaw and Halfus weekly for a while now with only repair bills to show for it. I'm seriously thinking of taking one of my other level 85 alts to see how some other groups do it, but as a Guildmaster/Raid Leader/Loot Master/Banker/Recruiter/Webmaster/Main Tank there just doesn't seem to be the time.

I know I'm looking forward to the next tier of raids, not so that we can raid them, but so that we can raid the previous tier. Some guilds are just that casual that the last tier is our content. So for you Ubers, hurry up and finish so they roll out 4.2!

@Tondef: If you're alone in doing all those guild-related activities that you mentioned, then I hate to say it, but your officer core is just in there for the rank and can't be bothered to share the responsibilities. I've been in your situation before in TBC, and let me say that your position will cause you to burn out much quicker than anything game-related.

You need to either distribute responsibilities to your officer core, or if they just don't show interest, then disband the guild and look for a non-leadership spot in some other guild. Playing as just a member can do wonders to rejuvenating you.

The "right way" is taking a break from WoW.

Go try Rift or LOTRO or simply stop gaming alltogether, go outside.