Me and my allies casual pvx guilds with no rules aside from no cheating dropped to extremely low levels. My guild has average 2-3 online, where historically with little management it had 14 online, I only had 4 members drop guild in the past 8 months. I was typically the only constant pvper. My allies are probably the biggest noob friendly training guild in the game and has dropped from 34 average to 9 average online. They actively recruited 40 players in the past 4 months, only dropping inactive to make room. Only 3 of the 40 left on their own. The game seems to be experiencing an extreme chilling effect from new players to end game vets.
I'm not knocking anyone that is just day tripping through the game and enjoying the sights, I get it. In fact that's how i tell people they should check out the game, but I tend to inform them that the "hard grind, feat" of gear and wealth progression has little to no mechanical payoff these days, so stick to the chill side of things.