Nevertheless, Guild Wars 2 might become one interesting exception. Its design seems too "decent" to me. By "decent", I mean players hardly have to gang up to maximize their benefits in the game. Instead, GW2 encourages strangers to interact with each other. And there is no raid in GW2. The biggest instance only requires 5 people, so players can finish them without support from a guild. When encounter a mass event, they can simply ask the strangers in the same scene for cooperation. As for the loot, different from traditional DKP system, it will be decided by the server in GW2. No individual will be involved in the assigning process. 

Such mechanism will drive the guild back to the pure nature. Why you join a guild? Because you have a similar background and share the same objective and topic with other members. Every player has different interest and needs. In GW2, they can select a guild to find like-minded people according to their own anytime they want.

You may wonder what will happen to the traditional guild in GW2(Guild Wars 2 Gold). In my opinion, they won't disappear. Actually, there will be some settings similar to "guild level" in GW2. The guild hall function will be added to the game later as well. So players who prefer traditional guilds will still be able to find their place and then serve it with loyalty.

There is another interesting thought occurring to me. As we are informed, there will be server war in GW2, so I think every server may form one or two powerful guilds as the representatives in the future. When they recruit soldiers for the server war, players can get together in these guilds first. Then these guilds will make coordination and plans. After they win the server war, players can go back to their former guilds. The system will calculate everyone's achievement in the war. Sounds interesting?

In the last, some of you may ask question like "do you think whether the guild drama caused by disputes will decrease, or even disappear in GW2". Well, I can just say I don't know. Don't forget conflict and friction always happen when you interact with others. They could be the trigger of a big guild drama. It is hard to totally avoid this unless you don't join any guild.

Anyway, the above is just my speculation. How exactly will the guild work in GW2? I think even ArenaNet can't control this. They would probably make some modifications to the guild system before it is officially launched. However, except for the settings, players' attitude and response will also make big influence on the operation of guilds. We just wait and see.