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Our guild was founded on 9/11/2005 with a casual raiding guild M.O. in mind. 3 days (12 hrs)/wk. We only ask for about 2/3 attendance, though most of our active raiders can make all 3 days. We have never changed the days or the start times since our first guild run through MC.
This has been a huge benefit for our members, as they are able to enjoy the game as well as tend to RL activities w/o fear of "missing out" on the important events. It is not uncommon for us to run into a more hardcore player in the guild crying out for additional days or an "unofficially official" raiding off-night to handle some of the more obsolete content (for our guild) like Gruul's and Mag.
Darkspear's progression is quite behind the usual curve despite being a launch server (no one has downed Kael yet), so this has contributed greatly to the hardcore's morale as the race (for those who choose to compare themselves to other guilds) isn't very fast-paced. So casual speed progression still leads to being high up on the "leaderboards" for our server.
This does lead to issues of those who are concerned about the lack of TC and min/max (green gems, not everything enchanted) among some raiders, but at the same time gives those who TC more of a pivotal role in deciding how our guild will go about a certain encounter. So those w/o an officer rank can still feel like they are leading because there aren't so many at odds on how to tackle something because they haven't crunched the #s.
I personally believe the success of a cross-breed (call it what you want) guild will largely be based on the level of progression on your server, and what % of leadership is casual or hardcore. Some players, like myself, fall into a grey area of casual and hardcore as we TC but don't put in as much /played as the hardcores. Having a solid mix within the guild should provide some synergy for your guild to discuss all aspects of the game, rather than causing a divide.
If your server is well progressed (near end of Hyjal and up), hardcores are not likely to be happy with a cross-bred guild unless the raiding casuals fall into that grey area I mentioned earlier.
The other benefit to having a good mix is the active nature of /g. We could go into a long conversation of how gay someone is (joke), and at the next moment TCing about shadow priest vs holy priest viability in the different arena brackets. A guild swinging one way will likely be focused in one area and not providing the most variety a member can get out of the social and gameplay aspect of WoW.
I've raided with an active hardcore guild (5+ days 23+ hours) and the chat mediums were very boring but the raid was very focused. I've raided with a pure casual guild who have spent several weeks in Kara but were wiping on Huntsman ad nauseum. Vent and /g were loads of fun, but the gameplay aspect was failing.
Not only do I believe Casual & Hardcore players can co-exist in a guild, I also feel that this this type of guild makeup is critical to long-term success -- unless a hardcore guild is consistently competitive and the casual guild has no honest interest in progression (that or a large portion of the roster has at least one IRL buddy in the guild).
At least this has been my experience being in a guild for two years that has survived surrounding explosions/implosions/transfers and still progressing competitively within our own realm.
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