i second what most people have said here about transfering. Heck, a good part of my guild's recent recruits came from guilds who thought that transferring to gurubashi would solve their problems.

Its not that I doubt your guildmate's loyalty, but think of it this way: what if, after you transfer, you don't experience the sort of influx of applications that you hope for? Many potential recruits are looking for guilds that are raiding regularly, and most, if given the option, will prefer to go to an established guild than to one that has 18-20 (great as they may be) raiders and needs additional recruits to raid at all (as opposed to needing more recruits to have some cushion and be able to raid regularly). Will your folks stay with you even if it takes a week to form a good group of 25 people? Long waits for potential recruits can be more frustrating than doing unsuccesful runs with unexperienced members, and just one defection in that time period can be enough to destroy morale and start a mass exodus.

So unless you are certain that your core group will stick together even if it takes a couple of weeks to raid again, avoid this at all costs.

I will double-stress this as a great way to find candidates. I did the "baby-sitting our general application thread" thing for awhile, but by far we got better results when I took the time to dig through the individual LFG applicants and taking the time to see if they were a good fit.

Another piece of advice, is just to be brutally honest and personal with your message. If you're trying to recruit an individual - don't give them a copy-pasted reply that doesn't address any of their points. I see this all the time and it's just embarassing when an EST PvP guild posts a "hey check us out" standard message on a thread that's titled [A] Shadow Priest LF PST PvE guild. The more you sound honest, up-front and personal, the better your response rate will be.

And yes, some of our very best applicants came from two pools:
1) Cross server applicants
2) Skilled friends/family of current guild members

Regarding #2, make sure to stress to your guildies that even if someone is a friend, if they suck they won't get in. Friend-ism/Nepitism is great in the office and in politics, but not so much in a raiding guild =)

Snow:

We're actually just starting to get comfortable in SSC/TK and are looking for a few people to transfer over. Although I'm not sure the server is active as you wish.

Approximately how many people are you talking?

God, I'm so desperate at this point. My guild isn't progressing and a huge part of me just wants to take the officers and run, but I'd hate to be that guild master...

Attendance FTL?