Same here; our guild nearly fell apart as well. People cancelled their subscriptions left, right and centre, and I nearly joined them. I don't feel welcome in Cataclysm content at all--it's the reason I haven't run a heroic since Firelands was released, and have only run one ZG and one ZA for the achievements from finishing them.

Yep. This sounds very familiar.

My guild did not die, but we lost a lot of people. The difficulty was way to high for our casual guild. We are slowly trying to hang in there and rebuild.

I have so much hope that MoP will breathe new life back into the game and our guild.

I adore the Normal difficulty level of Cataclysm raids. It's been a really great fit for my guild. We haven't spent any time in the non-nerfed Heroics of either tier, but it's likely they would be out of reach for our skill level. In contrast, the nerfed versions of Normal are so much easier they are literally boring and un-fun for us.

While I love the current tuning, I also recognize that it's too much for a lot of people out there. I've never been a fan of two difficulty levels, it's just not enough for the large variety of players that WoW has. I really hope the LFR pans out and offers a proper difficulty for those that struggle with current raids. (Related note: In the Blizzcon D&R panel, the devs said that they plan to make mechanics better tuned for an easier/less-experienced raid in LFR, not just the numbers.) It'd be great to have everyone who wants to raid, able to raid at their preferred difficulty level.

It might actually be shocking to people that I'm not a Hardcore Heroic raider, but that I still dislike the easy-mode of the nerfs. It might be hard to understand, but "too easy" really is "too boring" for me. I don't want to walk in and one-shot Dragon Soul with a PuG on release day. I also don't care how many people beat it before me and get better gear, I just want to raid with some challenge and some fun. I don't want to take that opportunity away from others though, which is why I absolutely support 3 raid difficulty levels.

@Skarn

First off let me say that I agree with you that two difficulty level is not enough, and I too am hoping the LFR difficulty setting helps with that. I just wish they offered a 10 man version of it, even if that meant you couldn't use the tool.

As to you point of the current tuning, with the same caveat you mentioned of my opinion based on my experience with no other data points, I both agree and disagree with you. This is where difficulty and tuning and accessibility start to collide. Let me explain by way of an example.

Pre-nerf my guild was 2/7 in Firelands. Post nerf we have jumped to 6/7. Took us a few weeks to get there as many people just stopped playing after the initial stuggles. Recently I have noticed an oddity on Alysrazor, we either die spectacularly (flyers die at starfox, tanks/healers have some odd bird/worm/debuff timing, people get touchy feely with tornados) or we beat it in record (for us) time. Last time I think we killed her right as she took flight for the final round. To me, what this shows, is that we are dying to the complexity of the mechanics, while being far far ahead of the tuning. While the nerfs did change the mechanics of some fights a little, mostly they were nerfs to the tuning, which leads to the odd behavior I described above.

I too enjoy a certainly level of difficulty and I too think too easy is too boring, but I'm just wishing the next tier has a few more tightly tuned fights that are slightly less mechanically difficult.