Depressing guild drama

I feel really depressed now, having inadvertedly caused a guild drama. I had noticed that there were many more level 80 characters in my guild than we get raiders together. So I thought that maybe if I ask around why these people aren't raiding, I can find out whether it's the raid time, or something else that keeps them from raiding. And maybe we could find a solution, like organizing an inofficial raid for alts and people who can't come at our usual raid times.

But then somebody posts a very emotional answer how he doesn't raid because WotLK raiding is too easy and isn't worth it. And of course he gets a reply from people who do raid, who don't like being told their raiding is worthless. Plus some rather insulting remarks about the state of the guild, of the "if raiding is so easy, then why do we still wipe?" kind. Then everyone starts shouting at each other, and in the end several people who have been in the guild for a long time end up /gquitting, while others post that they are taking a break from WoW. And me, I'm standing helplessly in the middle, stuttering "but, but, but ... I only wanted to help!"

I raid because I like to hang out with the people in my guild. They are very nice people, and usually quite reasonable. But the guild never really resolved an underlying conflict between hardcore and casual raiders, and now some people are reacting quite badly to the changes that Wrath of the Lich King brought to raiding. Personally I have trouble understanding why some people take raiding so damn seriously. Isn't it more important to do something together with people you like than to conform to some completely arbitrary performance criteria? Isn't it great if there is a place where you can take even those guild members that aren't world class raiders, and still have some success? I certainly wouldn't want to be in a guild where people are judged by how much damage they can do per second, or by some other performance measure. I don't select my real life friends by how many horsepower their car has, or by how high their annual salary is, why should I select my online friends by numerical stats? Especially in Wrath of the Lich King, what is the point of ditching friendly people for strangers with better raid performance to advance raiding faster? There is nowhere to advance to! Even when raiding was a lot harder, raid progression was at best a hollow goal. But it seems that when this hollow goal is taken away, some people simply don't know what to do with their virtual lives. What ever happened to "lets get the boys together and have some fun tonight kicking ass!"?