Recruiting tools

Ordinarily, recruiting through your server's official forums is a good start. There are also WoW fan sites where you can advertise your guild, such as WoW.com's [The Classifieds][1]. There's also the method of running a lot of PuG raids (such as the weekly raid) to try to identify good players without a good guild. (Not everyone is satisfied with their current guild).

However, at this point during the game, you may find recruitment impossible no matter what avenue you use. Hardcore raiders and semi-hardcore raiders are pretty much done with all the content out there. "Hardcore" tends to mean progression-oriented, and there's nothing right now to progress through. A lot of people are even taking breaks from raiding or even from the game until the expansion.

I have two suggestions for you:

1) Wait until the expansion hits to start your guild. There will be a ton of new or returning players looking for a home then, and tons of new content to progress through.

2) Change your target audience for your guild. Look for people who haven't raided much and want to catch up before Cataclysm. This means looking for undeveloped talent, not people who already have high gear scores and tons of achievements. Invest in newbies or other players who haven't yet had a chance to shine.

Good luck!

[1]: http://www.wow.com/category/the-classifieds/"The Classifieds"

Find them doing random heroics - plenty of unguilded or underguilded players are running randoms to better their gear - look for ones on your realm when you run.

Also, consider doing pug raids to find unguilded or underguilded players there.

WoW Lemmings is the best recruiting tool I've ever seen.

It scans many of the top WoW forums sites for player posts and consolidates all the information into one location, where you can search with filters.

Amazing tool!

1. Create and post a recruitment thread in both the Realm and Recruitment Forums. Make sure you outline your goals, the benefits of being in your guild and the sort of players you're looking for.

2. Make a name for yourself. Unfortunately, the most desirable aspect of a raiding guild is usually its progression. If you don't have enough people to start running 25s, take your best to 10s and earn the right to say "we've achieved x within y time of starting". Players look for guilds that may be on the rise. My main's guild saw heavy recruitment through our rising status on WoWProgress -- which, incidentally, has a recruitment page worth looking at.

3. Advertise, advertise, advertise. If you and your members are forum-goers, put recruitment in your signatures. Have a dedicated recruitment officer; have your raiders invite excellent players from PuGs, or look for people on the class forums who are looking to switch guilds.

4. There really is no "easy" way to pick up excellent raiders. If you're that keen on picking up quality players, you need to be willing to go to lengths to recruit them. This does mean using trade chat (you needn't spam; a tasteful message put out once every half hour or so is far better than a once-a-minute garble) and the forums. Once you've made your mark and have a strong core, people will start coming to fill in the gaps -- but this does take time. This late in WotLK, I wouldn't honestly expect to be able to gather an amazing group; many excellent players are winding down, becoming bored and taking hiatuses before Cata hits.