I am a veteran player of nearly 10 years, so I think I know a thing or two about the game. Here's my take on the game:

PRO

- Graphics: The game looks great, running on a custom-designed graphics engine which has surprisingly moderate system requirements
- There are many different tanks to research
- WoT features lots of community events; there's something new almost every week
- Games can be entered quickly, and servers are generally quite stable

CON

- Strong pay-to-win aspects. Some examples: new premium tanks are mostly stronger than researchable tech tree tanks (used to be different btw), playing high tier matches is hardly an option unless you invest money, premium ammunition and other consumables that provide a distinct advantage cost a lot of credits (which again are difficult to afford without paying real money) ... etc.

- Premium tanks are very expensive, with a single tank often costing 30 Euros and more (To be fair, it is not really necessary to buy too many, though)

- The WoT community is probably among the most toxic among all online games - certainly the worst I know, by a mile. So toxic, in fact, that there is a series of YouTube videos dedicated to demonstrate just how destructive players sometimes are

- Poor map designs: Many maps are one-sided (i.e. favour spawn points), offer little variation or are really too small for the capabilities of the tank tiers that can play on them. Note that this is not true for all of them, of course; some are really great, but notably the more recent ones are mostly really poor

- Extremely poor game balancing: This is the easily worst aspect of the game, and it comes in many shapes. Some examples:

* Although there are exceptions in every tech tree, it is an open secret that certain nations are quite consistently better than others in the game. Not that Wargaming would ever admit that, of course.
* Wargaming has a policy of rewarding the strongest players with the strongest tanks, so in high tier matches inexperienced players are put at an extra disadvantage
* Some tank classes are extremely difficult to counter (artilleries, wheeled tanks with an absurd auto-aim while moving).
* Due to the nature of matchmaking you will frequently find yourself in matches where you can do next to nothing
* The disparities in strength between tanks of the same Tier are often hair-raising. On Tier VIII, for example, a handful of tanks (mostly premium, of course) are so utterly dominant that the rest might as well not be in the game.

and and and ...

All in all, I would not recommend WoT to any new players anymore. It really isn't a particularly good game now; Wargaming have made too many poor design decisions over the past few years - the introduction of the stupefyingly idiotic wheeled tanks was just one example among many. It is true that it still has no equal in its niche, so if somebody wants to play a fast-paced tank shooter, it's probably this or nothing. However, those new players who are giving it a go should prepare for a game experience that is 10% fun and 90% frustration, and that frustration will way too often not be caused by their own inadequacy, but by poor game design.

TL,DR: Spare yourself the frustration, play something that is actually fun. It's not like there aren't plenty of great games out there.

Don't start to play the game.

The reasons:
1. Wargaming NEVER cared for the community. It was always about the money. It would be so easy to make the game more enjoyable again.
2. Nowadays the game is almost pure pay-to-win. It used to be relatively fair and balanced in the old days. But those are long gone.
3. Premium tanks for 40 bucks are outright better than their tech-tree counterparts.
4. The game is one ENDLESS grind. There is no real endgame apart from the world-map clan fights which are senseless. Even if you just wanna play the top tier tanks you will need to grind with your tier VIII premium tanks, if you are not a very good player.
5. For beginners it's a nightmare. You don't have a good crew and have a massive disadvantage. And you don't even realize it. As a seasoned player you have the means to upgrade your crew, but new players will suffer.
6. Match making is pure garbage, most games are over after 5 minutes now with one team winning bigly. Sometimes you have a close game where you perform well and that keeps you playing. Just like in gambling.
7. New OP tanks are introduced around Xmas, but they are only available in loot boxes (around Xmas) for a long time. So they can leech more money out of the customers.
8. If you expect to have historrically accurate tanks... forget it. You want to play with the mighty Tiger? It has no armor and gets in games with tanks from 20 years later.
9. Not being able to continue your old account on steam is the icing on the cake.

If my post here made you reconsider and you don't start playing, then I'm a happy man. Because I saved you from a lot of wasted time that you could otherwise have spent much more wisely.
I have played this game for almost 10 years until I gave up. Please don't make the same mistake.


Small Update because of some comments:
Just to put it into perspective. I have roundabout 27500 matches in the game, which translates to like 3600 hours in the game. (There are people with far more than 100000 games.) I just downloaded and started the game once to be able to write this review. Apart from that I have deleted the game and stopped playing.


=====

Answer to the dev (PeaceSoldier):

I'm sorry to say this but: First sentence, first lie. You never cared about player feedback.
Otherwise premium ammo would be different, tanks would be balanced below tier X. Match making wouldn't be with 2 tiers difference.

But ok, let's talk about the other stuff:
What kept me in the game for such a number of battles?
On the one hand the game had a much better meta on in the first years.
So it was kind of fun. On the other hand I was in a chill clan and we even played on the world map. As long as you are in a good community, everything is more fun.

So basically the game becomes your daily routine. At some point of course it starts to get more like work. And that's the problem with WoT, it is only work. Games are supposed to be fun, or you can try around and experiment. But WoT is no such game any more. WoT is work.

But when you have like 15 Tier Xs or so, and other stuff that you achieved, you don't easily quit a game.

So did I enjoy some of the battles?
Sure, even shortly before I stopped playing. About 1 in 20 games was fun.
But if I play 10 battles and spend my whole free time in the evening, I might have played 10 bad or medicore games where one side wins 15:3 oder loses 3:15 and you couldn't do much.
Because you ruined the match making. And I say you did it on purpose.

Why endless grind is bad? The games is designed to be grinded ONLY:
1. You want to play your tier Xs? So you need to grind your tier VIII premiums for credits.
2. You want to grind the tech tree to get a new tank? So you need to also grind credits in parallel. Ofc best with your Tier VIII premium tanks.
And I'm assuming you have a premium account too, because otherwise it takes forever.

So that being said, it would be best if you could also play tier VIII only. Without meeting tier IXs or Xs. But you won't do that for obviously wrong reasons like supposedly "worse match making".

Speaking about grinding again:
All the new special game modes seem like fun at first glance, but if you wan't the more decent rewards, you have to play the same game mode over and over again.
It's the only principle in the gameplay mechanics in WoT: GRIND

Even the ranked mode is basically one big grind and you will most likely shoot 90% premium ammo and lose tons of credits. So you need to farm with your tier VIII premium tanks again. This is even true for most of the really good players.

So after mentioning the tier VIII premium tanks so often, that leads us to the problem with them:
The first premium tank I bought AFAIR was the FCM 50t. It wasn't OP back then because virtually no premium tank was as good as a tech tree counterpart.
Nowadays it's pure garbage. And I payed like 40 bucks for it. The same was true for the Super Pershing ("Suka Pershing") and then for the IS-6.
Imagine meeting the new Italian autoloader tier VIII/IX/Xs with those tanks. Well THAT's fun.
Next tank I had: The Mutz, or as it is called "Schmutz" (use google translate).
All those tanks fell victim to the power grind. If you don't buy one of the OP premium tier VIIIs like the Progetto 46 you simply won't have a good time.
Bisonte C45, GSOR 1008 are other examples. And those were only in the loot boxes.
And when all players had too much gold from all the loot boxes (like me) you sold the Object 703 for REAL money as the last offer in the advent calendar. NICE!

You know what? I still got like 30000 gold in the game (around 120€) and I still deleted it.
That should tell you how much I like the game.
And one thing is sure: Even if Wargaming suppesedly had like the best game of all times, I wouldn't buy it. Because I know it will be a rip-off at one point.

Edit: Since so many people are seeing this, i thought i should give your a little more insight

Let's get a few things out of the way, the game itself can be fun, but only at times and only if you know what you are doing, sadly and trust me when i say this, you won't have much fun playing wot and i will explain why. I've been playing since 2012, i saw the game going trough may changes, some good, some bad, but mostly bad.

A not so fun game. Newbies in the game make up for about 70% of the total player base, nothing wrong with that, but this a two edged sword. As a new player, you will get punished for every little mistake you make by people who actually know how to take advantage of the game's mechanics, you may have fun messing around, because i know i did, but when you get serious, that attitude will frustrate you, because instead of messing around, you are going to want that victory and you will depend a lot on your team IF YOU ARE PLAYING ALONE. A good platoon of 3 can turn the game around, but let's face it, most of the times you will be alone or with another 2 square heads. This could be sorted out by balancing the teams, but that doesn't happen. MM should take in to account people's stats, play time, wn8 rating..etc when making the teams, but sadly that doesn't happen, not as it should be at least.

The illusion of progress. You know the old trick, when you tie up a carrot to a stick and hang it in front of the donkey? That's us. The progression in this game goes like this. Tier 1 to 6, decent, doesn't take much time or effort, quite rewarding and easy to do. Tier 7 to 10, quite the adventure. Why i say this. Well, after tier 7 you hardly make any credits when WINING a battle, when losing, most of the times you will also be losing credits, that wouldn't be so bad IF you could actually counter that drawback, what a coincidence, you can, by buying premium account. The hates will say "but it's a free game, stop complaining so much" and to that i will say, it is made to look like a free game, no feel like one. By the time you finish up researching the next tire, you will have about 1 tenth of the money you need to buy that tank, take into account the constant need for premium ammo, because guess what, that's the only way you will penetrate some of the atrocities you will encounter, the agony you have to go trough before you get a better gun or turret and you have yourself the key to success. Even with premium account, you will need a tier 5, most likely a premium tier 5 to actually make some decent credits and enough gold to convert free xp to skip grinding a stock vehicles.

Premium tanks, lies and deception. There were times when premium tanks didn't make much of a difference, now, it's just a reason to keep milking a dead cow. Some vehicles were quite op and unique, making them very special, but also a target for those looking to have an easy game. At first, being very op, those who couldn't afford them started complaining, in response, WG promised that those tanks would no longer be available for purchase, that they were only an once in a life time deal or that they will get nerfed, did that happen, no, they saw money and money they wanted. What did they do, seeing the peoples need for op tank, they started coming up with stupid ideas like the black market and over priced bundles to keep milking people's pockets as much as they could and although players kept complaining, they didn't care, this continues to this day and i am tired of it. In my entire time playing this game, only a single tank saw a major nerf and that was the super pershing, at that time, WG, to my surprise, gave people the choice to either keep the tank or get a full refund and that only happen because they were afraid of losing those with deep pockets.

The MM, a decade old problem. The MM saw many changes and yet, after all this time, it's still half broken. Most of the times you will have to put up with 2 or rarely 3 arty and 4 or more top tier tanks, placing you either at the bottom of the list or in the middle, that being a more convenient situation, but that is not all, sometimes it will screw up, placing 2 arty at the top of the list, along with another 3-4 top tiers, rendering you useless. Why can't they balance the damn MM, i don't know. The game should be + - 1 and nothing more and +2 when it comes to arty because some tanks are quite useless against top tiers even when fully upgraded.

Pref MM. This is mostly reserved for premium vehicles and it shouldn't be that way and this is tied to what i said above. Stock vehicles, some of them at least, should be included here, there should be some king of adaptive mm because as i said, even fully upgraded, some are useless and you will experience this frustration and agony yourself.

The gray area, tier 7 and 9. This is where most of the action takes part and this is also the most annoying part of the game, dealing with tier 9's as a tier 7 player is a pain in the ass, especially when you add arty to this.

The wn8. What is wn8 you may ask, is some sort of dummy locator, is a stat that basically will let others know how do you perform in the game, making people being toxic and negative even before the battle starts, you may be decent, you may be bad during that battle, but that won't matter, because they will treat you the same, the lower the number, the more names they will call you. WN8 has no use besides telling people how much you s**k and if you ask me, it should be gone.

Cammo, gold ammo and bonds. These are the 3 horses of the apocalypse. I know that the game has to evolve, i know dedicated players should have their rewards, but why do we have to make the gap between new players and veterans even bigger. Putting everyone in the same pot is like tossing a bull and a dog in the ring, like what the hell. I swear, every single patch they come up with another way of boosting even more a tank's specs, is not enough that some of they are just stupidly op, no, lets give them another shot. Bounty equipment, improved equipment and now equipment 2.0, curious to see how this will play out. Did i mention you will need to pour constant money into the game to keep up with everyone spamming gold ammo, that surely is fun, because if you don't, you won't be able to.


There are more to be said, the mechanics of the game, stupid bugs, premium accounts, arty and many more, but the conclusion is this. The game can be fun at times, but in order to have fun and win, you need a constant platoon of 3 and even then, frustration will come when you encounter op premium vehicles. Do not spend money on the game, because noting will ever change, they do not listen to what players have to said, their only purpose is to milk as much as they can before wot reaches top bottom.

WoT Veteran of an entire decade. These are the greediest, most incompetent and deaf developers that have ever handled a game this popular. The game has shifted from a very fun experience to a complete pay to win nightmare. It is no longer fun. They purposefully ignore the players and are 100% responsible for killing their own game or any chance of WoT being taken seriously. We even had esports for a hot minute but that's a complete joke at this point. There have been dedicated community members who have worked tirelessly to communicate what is wrong to Wargaming and the pathway to completely fix the game has been explicitly laid out in detail by the community for years. Instead of listening to the thousands of invested players, Wargaming has chosen to double down on overpowered premium vehicles, artillery, terrible map design and countless pay to win gimmicks that suck and ruin any current playability

Wargaming is doing this purposely to do whatever they can to milk as much money out of players as possible. They lie about gathered "performance" statistics when making changes that the player base universally dislikes and skew data to cherry pick whatever result justifies their insane balancing and mishandling of this game and people have called them out on this numerous times.

The game is now in a death spiral. Releasing the game on steam is a desperate last attempt to squeeze money out of new unsuspecting players as everyone who has spent years playing (and PAYING) this game leaves. You can't even play on an existing account. No one wants to put up with the borderline malicious behavior of Wargaming and their total disregard of the player base that loves the game that WoT used to be.

I am very sad that the current state of this game is so terrible that I have to NOT recommend this game and write this review. If you told me in 2014 that this is what it would have come to I would have thought you were crazy. The good times are long gone.

0/10 Avoid this game


EDIT: response to dev response - You have been saying that for over 5 years now. This exhausted excuse is old enough to attend school.

Nice Game

but wtf is Arnold Schwarzenegger doing on the front page in WoT?

You can't use your existing account.

Devs claim there's a technical restriction, but everyone knows they could have done it if they really wanted to.

Been playing since early 2011, and having even played the game professionally at one point, I simply cannot recommend this game. The main problem is clearly the fact that any existing players are required to create a brand new account and play through the abysmal tutorial that WG have set up in order to play, and this is due in part to WG "never believing their game would be multi-platformed".

Through all the ups and downs I have had with this game, it's still a hilarious irony to realize that even after a decade of this game being around, WG still doesn't care about it the way they should. Had proper development of the esport or the game in general taken place, this game could've easily been an all-time great, alongside other top-tier esport games. Sadly, however, that will never be the case due to the money-hungry and greedy nature of WG.

I will also say that if you're looking for an insanely popular game that lets you play at literally any time of the day, this is the game, just not if you're playing in NA, SA, or Oceania. The game's audience is solely left to the EU and RU market, where the vast majority of players are located, and thus the game is thriving in those two regions.

If you want to play the game, I would advise that you stick to WG's client. Who knows how useless the Steam Client will be considering they couldn't do the most minor task of letting us link accounts.

I've been playing this game since 2011.

You may wonder why so many negative reviews from old players? There is a reason.
Finally we (the players) can tell Wargaming what we think about them via Steam reviews.

What was a fun, free to play game back in a day is not like that anymore. Wargaming don't give a damn about the player base. They don't listens to us. Their goal is to milk us and bring profits. They have to make money you say? They can do it without crapping on players and holding us for idiots.

It's not a Free to Play (F2P) game. It's a Pay to Win (P2W) game now. The original early 2010s concept had money is a way to fasten the grind. You pay money to buy "premium" tanks to farm credits/crew XP. BUT these tanks are slightly inferior to regular (free) tanks. It was a novelty and WG was praised for it.
Not anymore. They sell outperforming (OP) tanks for $50+. Look at tank efficiency by the win rate all best performers are OP "premium" tanks. OP "trophy" equipment is only available if you pay for Battle Pass. "premium" ammo is an OP and a credit drain unless you pay for the premium account and boosters.

WG is not fixing long standing bugs (e.g. soap rocks). 10+ years passed with no good education on maps, tanks and strategies, new players are clueless cannon fodder. Balance fixes take 3 years with some tanks being OPs some being useless. Simple UI improvement existing in mods take 5-7 years to make it to game.

Instead they invest in making new "premium" tanks, loot boxes, casino rolls etc to abuse peoples gambling addiction. Huge bureaucracy, teams don't work with each other. Sales team constantly breaks game balance team. Headquarters (RU) doesn't talk to other regions (EU, NA, etc). Everything released in last 3 years is buggy or messed up. Events aren't coordinated between regions. Many (Rubicon, Halloween, Crew 2.0) were cancelled failures or rescheduled for a year. WG is not able to deliver anymore. They can only sell and milk now.

Is it a fun game? It is. If you're an old skilled player, preferably a paying whale. Noobs and F2P are cannon fodder. If you're ok to be farmed and have 45% Win rate you may enjoy it. Invest heavily in watching streamers to learn how to play.

Steam thanks for the opportunity to throw all that into WG face! Hope they will get their sheets together, stop abusing the playerbase and fix this damn game!

The short of it:

World of Tanks is the result of nearly a decade of lies, greed and shi*y business practices.
PLEASE DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY.

The long of it:

Like so many others posting I am a veteran of the game – my real account had 30+ premium vehicles, some rare reward tanks and over a 100k gold. I played over 10k battles, had a 68% average WN7 (win rate) and as high as 76% in certain machines, participated in the first clan wars and later co-ran a top rated clan. I submitted replays to our gnome overlord Jingles, AKA Bohemian Eagle at the time and had several games featured on his channel. One of my fondest memories of this game is getting killed in a tier 2 tank by the creator of XVM… apparently there was an award for taking him out but I didn’t get it. Got damn close but no cigar.

All that said, I have not logged in in years and have no interest in ever doing so again. Over the years I kept watching Jingles and Quickybaby on occasion and saw that my gut feelings were correct – this game got worse and worse in exactly the ways that made me drop it back when. Please understand that I downloaded all 30 gigs of this trash, launched it, started the tutorial, got annoyed at the lag, ate supper, finished the tutorial and wrote this entire review hoping to just save one person I don’t even know from paying for his own grief and headaches.

You will notice numerous reviews stating that you cannot link an existing WG account to your steam account. This should not technically matter to a new player, however the rest very much should:

To start off, the game description is a lie – it is not a “tank mmo”, never was and never will be. In a regular game you will at most share the map with 29 other players. The rest is menu screens. There is no overworld to speak of, no 100+ man raids, no trading, no hubs, nothing except for team death-matches and chat.

So is it a tank Simulator like WG used to claim? Nope. The tanks started off fairly historically accurate but that went out the window years ago. Now days WG releases fictional machines, sometimes invented out of whole cloth, with maddening power creep. Even premium tanks (i.e. tanks you buy with REAL money) get weaker over time as new premium tanks are introduced. The USSR tech tree alone now has over 60 premium vehicles, used to have 6.

So what is this thing then? I want you, dear reader, to imagine a Call of Duty match where your weapons can miss not due to poor aim but due to RNG. The distance does not matter either, a point blank shot can just go wide. This happens a lot. Now, imagine that your character can develop skills that will make him better at aiming, but it will take hundreds and hundreds of matches to do so. In World of Tanks these would be crew skills and some of them (for example sixth sense – playing without which is a major handicap) are absolutely essential. Now imagine if you will, that most of the enemies have those skills and most of your teammates do as well: you will underperform due to no fault of your own and be called every name in the book in team chat.

Fun right? Let’s keep going: after every match, win lose or draw, you will receive credits (the silver currency) and experience. You need experience to unlock upgrades for tank components on each tank – better gun, engine, tracks, etc, and once certain upgrades are done to unlock the next tier tank in that particular branch of the tech tree. Playing a “stock” tank (one without upgrades) is measurably worse in every way than playing the upgraded version. You will move slower, have less HP and worse armor, less accuracy, deal less damage and so on. With rare exceptions this is how every tank you unlock starts and now you need a crew. You can move crews by paying, or, get a new crew for that machine. If doing so there are 3 options: free 50% crew training, which is exactly as bad as it sounds, 75% crew training for the in game silver currency, or 100% crew training for Gold (the game’s premium currency and you can guess what that means). So essentially, before individual skill even begins factoring in you are handicapped in 3 different ways unless you are willing to pay and spend time grinding the skills. Oh and once a module or tank are unlocked you need to actually buy it with silver. Furthermore after every battle you need to pay to restock ammo, repair the tank, restock consumables, restock premium consumables (with gold - God help you).

Going back to our COD analogy – imagine that you start the game with limited ammo and cannot get more in the match. Ran out? Too bad. Forgot to load? Too bad. Loaded too much of the wrong ammo? Yeah, you guessed it – too bad. There are 3 types of ammo, and the objectively best one costs gold. What do I mean by best? Well, just that – its better in every way then the standard, projectile speed, armor pen, damage and so on. Why limit ammo in a game? “Historical Realism!” Tanks have the wrong load outs or ammo capacities? “This is for Game Balance!” Now, WG used to say (read = lie) that only 2% of all ammo used in games is premium, I urge you to watch any stream or youtube video about the game and see if this statement is true.

How do you get gold? Well, there are 2 main ways: either spend your hard earned money, or get it through game events which will eat inordinate amounts of your time for peanuts – literally dozens of hours per.

So let’s try again – you are playing a team death match game where you are artificially handicapped for being new (before your actual skills even come into the equation), are forced to play with worse equipment then most everyone else and when your shots decide to hit the target, they have a good chance to bounce off or do less harm then what your opponents probably using on you. To even stand a chance to improve you will have to invest massive amounts of time and at some point just wanting to make the grind a little faster – real money and this rabbit hole goes a long, long way down. Here’s the real kicker: remember the 10 tiers I mentioned? The really cool stuff is at tier 7+. You are looking at hundreds of matches of time to get there but the icing on the cake is that until about tier 6, a mediocre won game will net you enough credits to pay for the match (repair, restock) and after tier 6? You will lose money on 8 games out of 10. This can be made better by using a Premium account – which (and this might shock you) costs gold per day / week / etc.
There are also Premium tanks in the game, they used to just earn more credits then their equivalent tech tree variants, but not be quite as good. Today? The new premium machines are just pound for pound better. Quickybaby the youtuber I mentioned earlier started running a 2nd free account some year and a half ago. In a recent video he admitted that it took 6000 matches – that’s around 700 hours - for the experience to start feeling like what he was used to with his regular account. This is a “uniqum” (top percentile of the player base) full time professional player with nearly a decade of experience in the game.

On another note never forget that WG as a company cannot abide criticism. Anything that even remotely challenges them will be deleted from the official forums (please try it for yourself and see how long a remotely negative comment stays up, hell, feel free to copy-paste some of this review to their forums). Take a look here on Steam – the forums are locked; all discussion needs to take place on their platforms. This alone should tell you a lot about who these people are and how they treat their paying costumer.

There is more, a lot more, but I am getting close to the character limit: do yourself a favor, don’t get into this. If WOW was digital coke, this is digital heroine and just like the real thing it might make you ugly and poor.

Oh yeah and Wargaming – there are hundreds of people saying the same things here, maybe it’s time to tone down the greed just a tad?

You can't login with your existing wargaming account.