You know the mantra, corporations, baaaaad, baaaaaad, (say it like a sheep!) But these claims are generally unfounded.
Most big gaming corps (EA/Activision/Ubisoft/etc) are pretty bad for various valid reasons, but I wont get into that argument here.
No matter what MMORPG you do decide to play, having a solid group of people with positive attitudes and good constructive feedback to help you triumphs everything else. I don't blame you for staying with WoW and your guild. I still play EVE Online because I ran into a really solid group of people and having a blast...despite declaring war on everyone lol.
As a 7 year veteran of WoW (on and off) and seen it from its late beta to patch 4.3 and its last raid, it was time to lay it to rest. My opinion may seem biased, but I'm craving action combat systems. I really wanted to like TERA (dat combat system!) but it still being a curse of a Korean MMO plus Diablo 3's timing turned me off. I sadly also did try: Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift, SWTOR - all "supposed" WoW killers. I did like Rift, but at the time my system was dying so my opinion was a little off. I'm glad to see it is still doing good considering things. I did hear FF11 (not FF14) was great 6 months afterwards and is still one of the few good games with a very solid storyline.
The industry is starting to realizing making a WoW killer is unrealistic and its time to focus on trying out new things, subscription gaming is hitting its market cap, and F2P might be the way to go (provided you don't screw the player over too hard). In 3 weeks + 1 month, GW2 will be a good test of F2P from a AAA (or was it AA?) house.