war:exploded removes content of .class files

To enable development in MyEclipse I have been configuring maven to build a folder with 'war' extention during the build. This then becomes an expanded folder that I can just copy (actually MyEclipse does it) to jboss for deployment.
After the build my folder structure looks like this:
--src

I also configure compiler to compile files directy into target/${project.build.finalName}.war/WEB-INF/classes (which would be a target/testweb.war/WEB-INF/classes in the example above). This worked great in maven 1.* (I can change any file, eclipse compiles it into the class folder and MyEclipse immidiately deployes it to the JBoss). It also seemed to work for few hours in maven 2 (I only starrted using it today). Now if I do: "mvn package" I get proper exploded war except that all files in the 'classes' folder have 0 size. It seems that compiler creates good class files (and copies resources there) and then war plug-in comes along and wipes content of these files (but not files themselfs):
Here is a snipped from my pom.xml:
<build>
<finalName>testweb.war</finalName>
<outputDirectory>target/${project.build.finalName}.war/WEB-INF/classes</outputDirectory>
<directory>target/war</directory>

<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<webappDirectory>target/${project.build.finalName}.war</webappDirectory>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

As an experimet I did following steps:
mvn compile - this produced expected results, compiled classes in the WEB-INF/classes folder

then I did:
mvn war:exploded - this command copied files from webapp and removed content from files produced by the compiler, so that all *.class files now have 0 bytes size...

Interestingly enough it seemed to work for few hours and then just stoped. I have rebooted PC just to see and I still get the same result...
my src\main\webapp\WEB-INF folder does not have classes folder, so I am not sure why war plug-in affects *.class files.