I feel your pain Stu. The first 2 real raiding guilds I was apart of broke up for the same reason.

The first one GM/RL just couldn't get raiders to show up or act serious when he wasn't around. Other officers even stepped up to lead the raids and handle guild business, but aside from the officers and some core members the rest of the raiding roster would come and go at their leisure. When the GM/RL took some much needed vacation time people started acting like the guild was breaking up and a few top people left for "better" guilds (a couple left before this due to RL issues though), that snowballed and by the time the RL/GM got back, nothing had been done and most of the top people had gone. /gdisband.

The second one was really progression focused when I joined, unfortunately some drama had ensued with a small sub-clique. It eventually caused one of the officers to /gquit, the problem was a bunch of his friends /gquit with him. It lead to recruiting of some people, but they weren't motivated to do anything much harder than ToC/ICC Lowerspire; and much of they time they wouldn't even show up for that on 10 or 25. When we wanted to go back to Ulduar a night out of the week to finish Val'anyr, many of these same people (and a few hardcore members that wanted pure ICC progression focus) started to bitch. It eventually became too much for the guild GMs and they just ended the whole thing and went to take a break from WoW.

Server transfers, Race Changes, differing expectations from members, badge gear updated by tier, easy 10man modes for all raids, make raiding different then back in BC. Big problem is a sense of individual greed has overcome the need to get into a guild, be good at your class, and not be a total jackass to people.

Server is pissed at you for ninjaing the Onyixa mount? Server transfer, Name Change, profit. You don't want to do the progression content? Just don't show up on progression nights, but keep coming on farm nights and get easy epics. A little mad that you got yelled at because you're too stupid/drunk to stop standing if Fire/Ice/Slime/Void Zones? /gguit and join a more "relaxed" 10man guild.

No loyalty, and no drive to do something even remotely challenging. Sometimes leadership can't even sanction these people because they need every raider they can get just to fill slots, so no sitting them for the night or /gkicking (unless they're really unplesent). They can take away DKP, but most of these kinds of jerks don't care about DKP anyway, they'll just take the epics nobody wants/everyone else already has.

Easy badge epics and 10man raids have made getting well geared raiders a lot easier, however it has also made them a lot harder to keep around.

[fogey rant] Back in my day you had to join a raiding guild if you wanted epic loot, and you had to kiss there ass enough that they would run you though old content to gear you out enough so you could simply stand in the final endgame raid instance and not get instagibed. And it couldn't just be any guild if you wanted to see the last boss, no sir, you had to join one of the 4 big guilds on your server. Let me tell you, no one ever complained. Sure, there was polite /w to the officers for a redress of grievances, and forum posts with politely worded suggestions of improvement, but there was very little whining/complaining/bitching because those people were either put on standby or out right /gkicked.

There was no 10man ICC, no sir. You needed no less than 25 people to get things run back in BC, and that's because Blizzard was being nice and lowered the numbers down from 40! You wanted to do 10man anything back in Classic? TL. Get 20 together and kill some tolls (ZG) or some bugs (AQ20), be Azeroth's exterminators, that's as close to 10man raids you ever got then. Want to do 10 mans in BC then stick with Karazhan and ZA. Loot not epic enough? TL. You want into BT? Then you needed 24 other people that knew their class and how to follow a raid strat. Raiders came prepared, or they didn't raid. [/fogey rant]

Hopefully Cata will bring with it some much needed changes to improve guild loyalty. Special abilities for guilds (i.e mass-rez) special bonuses for guild members (i.e. increased gold looted, and xp.), and Bind on Guild items and patterns should make people a little more hesitant to up and leave their guild or risk a /gkick.

Time will tell...Time will tell....