The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.
I got the impression that quite a few people were either signing up or returning because, well, the euthanasia of that massive organization breathed new life into the game.
It's like an in-character collapse of Rome in space or something. The sheer amount of disorder and fluidity that this set off provides all sorts of opportunity for players to do a variety of interesting things before the dust settles. I don't play Eve myself - MMOs give me soul cancer - but I tend to look over friends' shoulders a lot who do play this particular game, and the stuff going on in the last few days has gotten me closer to considering signing up than, well, pretty much anything else.
(Also, "Alliance" does not map to "Guild" in the WoW sense at all. You're underestimating the scope of the organization that got taken down, I think.)