I'm in the same boat and see the same issues; I log in and see that AvA is 0/200. Meanwhile, early, mid, and late war arenas have pretty good numbers, especially late war. I even see a decent amount of activity in the DA. I also see a few of the previously described "mowing the grass" players in AvA, or what I assume is someone logged in and AFK. No activity at all. Then someone will pop in, see that nothing is going on and log right back out. I imagine that this surfing of the arenas to find something interesting is not uncommon.
I've started going to the early war arena on weekdays to become better aquainted with the AH commands, learn the envelopes of the FM's, and get in some JABO proficiency. I know there are some guys from Oz flying in AH and probably some Kiwi's as well but the guys I know don't come to the AvA very often if at all.
What attracts me to AvA, besides the free biscuits, are the historic settings which are not available anywhere else in AH. In a perfect world I would be able to log in and jump into an interesting mission and spend an hour or two having fun. Base capture in and of itself would not be a priority, the mission would. Regretably, this is not the usually outcome of a Mon~Fri night for me. The FinnRus map is nice, but way too much dar for my tastes. Undoubtedly there have been some great fights, but there has been no movement on the map. Nothing to "stir the blood" so to speak.
last night I recall there were about 7-8 people in the early war arena and the main activity seemed to be base capture. I only saw one person actually up a spit to defend a base from attack. This, I think is a main stumbling point in the AvA. We want players to come in, but we don't want lopsided "milking" base capture. Or more precisely' we don't want base capture unless we are all there to defend. So the AvA is tailored it to make it practically impossible to do so. I think most people want to feel they have accomplished something while playing and that is not always available in AvA.
