I know exactly how you feel Aghast. I've gone through this so many times that I've thought about just not joining guilds anymore. My first guild was too small to raid, but many members wanted to. As I had risen to GM at that point, the only solution I could come up with was mass recruit, which failed miserably since we were a small guild, or merge with another, which only half the guild supported. In the end half merged, half stayed behind in an even smaller guild that didn't go on to do much of anything.
My second - third guilds all lasted pretty well, raiding ZG/AQ20 (Pre burning crusades) and then Kara, before breaking apart. The last guild hit up SSC, Mag, Gruul, TK, Hyjal, and even started on BT before it fell apart. Since then, I switched to Horde as a Co-Worker of mine runs his own guild that hasn't fallen apart once in the past 3 years I've known him.
It seems to be the nature of a guild to thrive then die out over time.
