tl;dr
Horde strat was SHB -> Balinda -> SHGY, while up to half of their team slowed down the Ally push. Horde typically did not start defending en masse until Ally reached the Horde base.
Ally strat was SFGY -> Galv -> IBT -> IBGY. They would defend SHGY and other SH objectives until they had SFGY. After this, they would send 10-20 ally back to the base to defend the bridge.
/tl;dr
Seems to be some confusion here. What Ziryus is saying is at least partially correct, and I believe I understand what he is saying. I’ll try to help explain for him.
So, back in the day, the horde DID NOT Zerg. This is because the Horde back in the day did not understand the importance of the objectives as we do today. What they did (At least on my server/battlegroup), is they started off the match by piling into SHB and sticking to the east and south of the Bal Bunker.
Ally, on the other hand, was primarily preoccupied with capping SFGY at the beginning of the match. As such, Ally would typically stick to the north and west of the Bal bunker.
The result is that fights would break out around the Bal bunker. We’d go back and forth pushing between SFGY and the SHB.
AV was generally very disorganized back then, so you’d have Ally try and retake the SHB and you’d have Horde try to slow down the Ally push to SFGY. However, in almost all battles, both sides eventually got their objective.
Once Ally had the SFGY and Horde had burned down the bunker, that is when the “base race” phase of the battle began. Once again, I say “base race” because it’s very different from what you would call a race. Both sides would split into O and D teams, and both would slowly work their way towards the enemy base.
The Horde back in the day did not understand the importance of IBGY. They typically would not allocate enough people to defend it properly from the Ally attack from SF. If Horde had done this, they would have won far more AV’s.
The result of this looks very much like what we actually have today, if the Ally team is successful in holding IBGY. Or, should I say, the Horde team fail to properly defend IBGY. The Ally team will send 10-20 people back to the base to defend the bridge. This should slow down the Horde long enough for the Ally team to win.
The main difference is that AV back in the day took hours to complete, even in 1.12. Both sides defended their bases much more vigorously, and they also defended their forward GYs much less.
The “Zerg” meta, where both sides literally stopped defending, did not come around for me until just before TBC hit. I’d say probably a month, maybe two, before TBC release.
This continued for a while in TBC, until Horde got their big brain moment and figured out that “defending ibgy = win”. Literally.
The Horde nowadays have this information, so they started off with defending IBGY. The only possible way that Ally have overcome a Horde team defending IBGY is either through 1. Vastly superior numbers (Horde team does not send enough to defend) and 2. Vastly superior force (Premades).
The “Cubby Strat” that has been all the rage lately works because it forces the Horde to SFGY, forcing the Horde into a similar position as what the Ally back in the day dealt with. Horde not defending IBGY.