Eh, I can imagine! In TBC Alliance was heavily outnumbered in my battlegroup, so usually it was 40 hordelings vs 10 of us. After 5-10 minutes we would get to maybe 30 people or so, but by then most of the map was already lost and there was no chance of recovering. However, sometimes there were premades or simply more players in queue, and we could play with even numbers. I've had a few epic 1-2 hours battles there, even saw a forest lord summon or two.

It got better at the start of Wrath (not sure if there was a battlegroup merge or just an influx of Alliance players) and 40vs40 was finally the norm. But eventually people realised they'd get more honor points by simply rushing to the enemy base and ignoring the opposite faction, and AV became a PvE battleground. I'm guessing this is still true nowadays.

Such a shame really, some of my best moments in WoW are related to AV. I should still have a screenshot of that time when both sides were running out of reinforcements and we won the match by one kill; I think I was in the top 5 kb count with my ret (way below hunters and mages of course) and was kiting two rogues when the game ended. :)

For the most part, yes, it did. I know not everyone agrees with the 'casualization' of the game, but I think streamlining the gameplay and making more specs viable was a good call. It was certainly more playable than TBC.

What Blizzard hasn't handled properly, imho, is (as always) class balance. That, and they were very slow at releasing new content. The wait for Icecrown Citadel was waaay too long. I probably should have quitted there, rather than dragging myself through Cataclysm...

You can't release content faster. It has to be conceptualised, developed, tested. These are not exactly easy and short processes.

Yep, that’s what I remember too. The last time I played, Alterac Valley was pretty much just a race and the battle hinged upon who got to and killed the general first. There was just no defence anymore, not even a need to claim the graveyards. That was certainly not possible in the early days of Alterac Valley. At some point Blizzard just removed most NPCs from the map and reduced hit points of captains and generals. Players would just rush across the map, claim the towers and bunkers, kill the captains along the way and quickly go to the general. It was the most efficient way for both sides to gain a lot of bonus honour quickly, even if one side lost.

Seeing the destruction and mismanagement of Alterac Valley over time has become typical of modern Blizzard and World of Warcraft generally. Great ambitions went out the window.

WOW. Never played it. Never will.