Tibia's first guild according to CIP was the Order of the Flame. This guild was founded sometime in Alpha 3 and lived into Beta 4. The founders of the guild were the 5 most powerful players at the time: Dugabalosch, Leomar, Cipreii, Goliath and Harlech Quinn. These players created the guild with the intent to help reduce some of the newbie player killing that they saw, believing that nefarious players where picking on new players for sport. The guild's goal was to take in new players and train them to defend themselves, promoting a caring atmosphere for the game.
Their website, which was also the first guild website in Tibia, offered a first Tibia style genesis, detailing Tibia's creation and how monsters came to be on the worlds surface. It is interesting to note that in 1998 Tibia was already transitioning away from a roleplaying game to one which focused more on combat. The genesis on their site offered a kind of transition which bridged these two different states. Though the Order of the Flame was designed to help train new players for the combat of Tibia, it still retained the roleplay side of these old players.
Though the purpose of the guild was noble, three of the five founders (Leomar, Goliath, and Harlech Quinn) left the game for two months while they tackled their busy real lives. When they returned, they found the game had greatly changed, with the players they had helped, now heroes of their own. The two founders who has played throughout this time, Dugabalosch and Cipreii, had left to join The Paladins of Darkness guild, a neutral guild which was cross-purpose to the Flame. POD was more centered around taking care of yourself and your members, while the Flame was more helping the community directly.
This might have been fine, but what stood out to the returning members most was that their former pupils now treated them as strangers and disparaged them for asking for assistance, acting in a condescending way. The returning founders were angry at the change exhibited by the community in such a short time and posted about the ingratitude of their former members. Publicly airing their grievance proved to be problematic as it caused the Tibian community to turn against them. The spat grew to the point where their former pupils began hunting them. This entire drama can be found here.
Though the guild was very clearly fractured, and nearly faded entirely, there was still some members who kept the guild alive. Despite these efforts the guild never shook off the scorn of the community and eventually faded into memory.
All early guilds had no physical presence in game so a guild could lose all its members and still technically exist. Your membership in a guild was only known if it was chronicled on the website or found in your comments sections which appeared in the online list whenever you were online.