Future of the Guild in Cataclysm

So PvD has a great post about talking about the supposed end of Solo play in the next expansion. (You can find the original post here) I posted my comment about the amount of content that will be available for solo play... but the question arose of how this will impact smaller guilds and Raid Alliances.

I participate in what can best be described as a Raid Alliance, though in reality it is more of a glorified pug. Marrus is the guild leader and raid leader for the Guild The Tempest. The Tempest however is a small family and close friends guild. In fact its just like my guild Shadow of Teldrassil. I created SoT as a place to call home where friends can come and be themselves. Most of the members don't raid but some occasionally do join me. I however, raid with The Tempest quite regularly.

During the week we get 10 man runs together with 5 Tempest members, me and 4 others. Kobeck was one of the other 4 but due to College load he is taking a break from organized WoW. My wife also occasionally comes as does Codoy and Caspien when they are on and we need people. But for the most part the other 4 people are totally random.

Ok so that was a wall of text to basically say this... I play in a small guild where in the new system I would be the top contributor to the guild leveling system. In fact I would wager that my 6 80's would contribute 1-6 in that list. But if the system takes in account the top 20 players then the other members who aren't as active or don't raid won't contribute as much.

It is unclear as to how this will affect the guild progress as a whole. I also wonder about The Tempest. Even though as a gathered force we are clearing new raid content, no single guild can take all the credit for it. Also one of the perks mentioned is increased gold and a raid resurrect. How will these work if not everyone in the raid is a member of the same guild?

Of course the obvious solution would be to merge guilds but that may not really be an option. Though we get a long together great in raids and could also in a guild, I cannot say the same for the members of their guild I haven't met, as well as the members of mine who haven't met them. I don't want to destroy the family atmosphere in either one of the guilds just so we can be viable as a raiding guild.

This is still all a long way off but it is tickling in the back of my mind every time I log on.