Something I've instituted at our table is having new Dungeon World players read this guide BEFORE reading the actual rules. I've noticed that the players that did this seem to grasp the game much quicker than those that went the more traditional route of reading the rules first.

Anyway, thanks for the hard work. It's really improved our game!

Couple additional quick points:

1: Remember there are no "turns", have your bad guy act as often as you want (or as fictionally appropriate).
2: Dangerous environments can also force more dice rolls on the players.
3: The tougher the creature (or the encounter) the harder the GM Move.

I've even modified Basic Moves for really tough opponents. For example, Hack & Slash still causes damage to the PC on a 10+ (although I use a smaller amount of then the creature's normal damage).

I've noticed that in the campaign I'm running the players are giving more and more "tactical description". In fact it's becoming increasingly rare for one of the players to simply Hack & Slash. They describe all sorts of interesting movement, defensive and offensive techniques, and are frequently attempting to do something other than just HP damage when they attack. They are trying to pin, intimidate, damage limbs, blind, distract, disarm, push, corner, daze, etc. etc. The more they do this the more interesting the fights are becoming. As an added bonus I find that creatures need less HP because the general flow of combat is that the heroes usually try to gain an upper hand "tactically" and then strike a couple decisive blows against the enemy to finish it off. Awesome!

One of the things that I think helped my players embrace this kind of play was seeing me use enemies in the same way. Only occasionally do I simply inflict HP damage against players. Most of the time the heroes are getting placed in increasingly worse positions as the antagonists are "successful". Players get knocked down, thrown through windows, grappled, disarmed, caught on fire, loose control of their motor skills for a moment, dazed, made to look foolish, lured into a bad position; you get the idea. The other thing that helps is that I allow most anything to be attempting in combat so long as the players keep two things in mind:

1: If they are trying something that is specifically a Move that exists for another class, but they do not possess the Move, I don't allow it (don't want to diminish the abilities of those classes that have them as class Moves).
2: Repercussions of an action are based on the amount of risk involved. The more risk a character takes the more intense the outcome, for good or bad!

Just a few thoughts from our table.

This may or may not be of help but your players may like the FantasyCraft RPG a lot. It is a 3.0/3.5 based d20 game but the combat is a lot quicker and the classes are a lot more unique and customizable.

In my experience changing the fundamental paradigm of a game is always less effective than just changing games.

Something else to consider that I've done in my game.
Oftentimes when a character is attempting something and I feel like there isn't really any risk involved I don't have them roll dice. The other day when our cleric wanted to heal a couple of characters outside of combat I just had everyone regain 1d8 HP. No big deal.

In general if I can't think of consequences for a 7-9 or a 6- result, then why bother rolling? In DW dice rolling isn't really about success-failure but the "cost" of success.

Couple ideas:
1. Target of the spell heals but caster looses that many HP.
2. Nearby dead creature reanimates and attacks.
3. Nearby bad guys "detect" the presence of the divine spell (maybe they can even track the cleric by his divine aura).
4. Target regains HP but the wound really hurts, suffer a Debility (I am a real bastard GM).
5. The energies of the spell activate "something" (magical trap, weird effect, etc.).
6. The cleric's deity reveals something in a flash of divine insight (future danger, the death of the character, etc).

Just a few examples that have come up in my game.

Good point Scrape.

One thing I've learned over the years is to stop having preconceived notions about a fight, especially when running Dungeon World. Monsters and NPC's are so easy to come up with on the fly that I could care less about how quickly a creature dies. Also, instead of focusing on how tough a specific creature is, I focus on the overall encounter. When I want the encounter to be more difficult I don't just throw higher stat monsters at the PC's. Instead I do things like; use more creatures, fill the area with hazards, crazy environmental effects, and forcing the PC's to focus on objectives other than combat itself (rescue or protect an NPC, stop a ritual, etc.).

In general whenever I want to up the challenge level of an encounter I force the PC's to make more rolls. I find that this is the "secret" of Dungeon World, the more the PC's roll dice the more potential moves the GM can make and the more difficult the encounter! My players have picked up on this and I've noticed that DW is the first game I've ever run where players stop and think for a moment before rolling the dice. In other games players tend to make check after check because oftentimes there is no price for failure; for example, six people making a Knowledge check to figure something out. If that happened in DW my group would never get to the sixth roll after I had made five "hard moves" against them!

I just started my first DW campaign a few weeks ago and for me the most helpful thing was to remind myself that whenever a hero was doing something, and there wasn't a specific threat directed at him, just let it happen. I've needed to break the old habit of asking for "success" rolls for things like spotting, getting into a position, making a simple climb.

Basically if you can't think of a good hard or soft move that could stem from the hero's action then just let it happen.