War Thunder is a game that you Pay to Lose in.

No matter what country you play, It is rigged from the start. Promises of fun and enjoyment soon shattered by the long and painful grind that you experience. Yes, I might admit some countries are slightly biased compared to others, however that doesn't excuse the fact of how painful this game is to play after the start.

Low Tier brings most people joy. it is the most balanced experience apart from a couple event vehicles. The grind at the start really isn't bad. you can get decent lineups for just about every nation that is available in game. It is actually fun at the start.

Mid Tier is where all of the good Premium vehicles come in to the game, making you think that by buying the premium vehicles gives you the upper hand in fights and confrontations. When in reality, the premium vehicles only give off the illusion that you have a good vehicle with all the modifications and no grind necessary. Most of the premium vehicles are either gimick vehicles with only one special feature, or they are lazy copy and paste vehicles with very small changes with sometimes the only change being the flag that is on it.

Top Tier is full of low level players buying the Premium Pack vehicles that are sold as cool things that have some sort of gimick, when in reality they don't offer anything special apart from the 2x research boost and all the modifications from the start. The unfortunate effect this has on a lot of the top tier battles is that you'll have maybe 5 good players, and the rest being premium using, low level players. That, in combination with the fact that some vehicles have better equipment than others, It makes the painful grind extremely frustrating.

The worst part about this game is the work to reward ratio. Without a Premium account or Premium vehicles the grind is painfully slow, and it gets worse the higher you go up a country's Tech Tree. The amount of research rewarded sometimes is next to none, and I think Gaijin does this to better improve the sales of premium accounts and vehicles. It is truly pathetic to make a game free to play while pushing this painful grind that the game enacts upon every player.

I got into this game thinking it was going to be a fun experience, however Gaijin has found ways to halt my progress at every corner. Some may call it a skill issue, or that I haven't played the game long enough. I however, call it design. Gaijin has knowingly crafted this game to make it the most painful experience for FTP players and casual players that don't have big wallets.

The only thing I can say to new players, is that it is best to AVOID this game. It draws you in with the promises of a cool tank/aircraft/ship simulator, when in reality it is a bug ridden, unfair, painful game made by scummy people that only want your money.

Edit 1:

After having played War Thunder for another maybe 500+ hours it has brought to my realization that the games community is one of the most toxic communities I have ever been a part of.

The community is so worried about the wrong things in the game.

"When is the F/A 18 coming?", "When is the new Abrams coming out?"

The community is so worried about adding new stuff to the game that they have no idea how bad the game really is. War Thunder is past broken half the time, borderline unplayable. Naval Battles take 7 minutes to find a match. In AirRB you play against aircraft that totally outbalance the one you have. The Up-tier system in all Battles can make a match unfair.

Gaijin is only half the reason this game is suffering, the other half is the community that enables Gaijin to make new premiums for the wallet warriors to buy. Oh you want the F/A-18, or a Su-33...?

Pay for it.