We were never hyper-competitive... We had a couple of dolphins but mostly it was folks who just enjoyed the f2p game and one another's company. So we have weathered storms pretty well, including when new raids came along and other guilds were experiencing players departing so they could join groups that beat the raids sooner.
Recent developments in the game, relics included, have begun to change that. We lost our heaviest hitter as he retired from the game completely, and some others did the same. One guy left for smaller guilds so he could help them do things like beat raids for the first time. We're188m GP and managed to find replacements so we are still at 50/50.
Overall sentiment is not great. People have long since given up the notion of catching up, and even treading water doesn't seem likely. Now the sense is that by not spending you are going to fall behind faster than ever before..."fun" enters into the picture less and less.
Amusingly, some of our members started playing marvel under the same guild name, and so we added a channel on our Discord for that. I wonder if that channel will ultimately see more traffic than the ones dedicated to this game...