That is also correct, but constantly undermanned games were not common since there was not gazillion exploit groups forming ‘premades’ with instant queues.
Not at least in the battlegroup i was in. Afkers, couple but now that amount is like doubled. But what is true is that these issues became into light more clearly after they gave us this watered down AV. It’s just tad much worse situation now in classic.
I think the main problem is that the current state of AV just gives free epics to those that willing to afk enough till exalted, so AV epics became part of the pre-raid bis list. Which definitely wasn’t the case in vanilla before bwl.
Also this watered AV together with the ranking system makes a combination what was only available in vanilla at a very later stage when it didn’t make pve in AV the main source of ranking.