The top-end doesn't drive away the casuals because neither group cares about the other. High-end players aren't sitting on Emperor Crush's spawn for 40 hours at a pop, and the casuals don't care who kills Trak this week because they have no intention of seeing it anyway. These two groups of people are playing different games that merely happen to share the same chat.
The folks the top guilds might drive away are the folks who want to raid but don't want to (or can't) join those guilds. Such people would find themselves rapidly disappointed. They also present a typical example of why nearly all newer MMOG's come with instancing.
If anything drives away casual players, I'd wager the forums have driven away more casual players than anything that happens in-game. These boards don't make a good first impression.
Your co-worker doesn't sound crazy to me Xadion. She knew what she liked. I used EQ for about that long and never did any serious amount of raiding, either. Some folks just don't enjoy that gameplay mode.
Danth
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