The issue is made worse by a clear domino effect. You play a few games of AV. Typical it starts with 10 - 20 Horde vs 40 Alliance. You get sick of AV. You decide to play other BG's because AV never has the total 40 vs 40. End result, less people willing to play AV, adding to the current shortage. http://bit.ly/fGTZuU

Fear that the so called mass battles wouldn't take place. It was a time when people still thought Warhammer failed because of too many scenarios and no open world PvP. Of course that was stupid to think back then. That game lagged in about 126423 other places to fail.
http://bit.ly/go1uu1

Now that that is clear and with the new 3.1 patch, they'll even add a new Raid boss in LW, the road is clear to include AV back in the normal badge BG's awards.

http://bit.ly/hTEy3i