Can you play this free to play?

[German Economy]

It looks interesting but the prices for anything look quite juicy on the steam shop.

Can i play this game free to play for a while or will i get obliterated by paid content instantly?

[Canadian Guitar]

Yes, you can play it all for free.
Give it a try and form your own opinion.
Here you will either get the "pay2win" people crying about things they don't understand, or the polar opposite.
Just give it a try yourself.

[German Economy]

alright, thanks :P

[Torn_Apart]

Ive barely spent a penny on myself tbh.
You really dont have to spend anything.
As has been said, paying helps the grind if getting to higher tiers is what you are after.
Me i play low br and have a blast without paying anything.

[Chief Beef]

Yea you don't have to spend anything, I would recommend starting with air battles to get your silver lions(currency you use to buy most things) up before you hop into ground battles if you were thinking about it, in my experience air battles overall you'll earn more silver lions than ground battles, other than that though you won't be thrown into a match with a bunch of people who bought an OP item or something making it not fun for you, generally speaking once you learn the mechanics and whatnot like any game you can have equal success in battles without spending a dime, like some have said here it may take time to accomplish but it is certainly possible. Some experienced people know what premium vehicles are good so you may run into high levels or just people with a good premium vehicle who have an advantage over you in some way but you shouldn't have to worry about that since you are just starting out and hopefully as you'll learn you'll find the counters for good vehicles you come up against.

[GIJoe597]

Between the Gaijin launcher and Steam I have played over 7000 hours. All of it free. Never had premium or spent a penny. It is very fun if you are not grinding as most people do. If you play the game normally, regardless of your BR, it is a great free to play game. Besides, you will eventually realize the lower BR's, 5.7 and below, are best.

[Lunovus]

GIJoe597 lähetti viestin:

Between the Gaijin launcher and Steam I have played over 7000 hours. All of it free. Never had premium or spent a penny. It is very fun if you are not grinding as most people do. If you play the game normally, regardless of your BR, it is a great free to play game. Besides, you will eventually realize the lower BR's, 5.7 and below, are best.

[CaptainSpacetime]

yeah it's "pay to progress" not pay to win.

if you just want to play ww2 and prewar stuff then totally doable without spending money

if you want to play modern-ish stuff though you'll defo want to shell out some cash to make grinding up to those vehicles faster (and even consider just outright buying a premium vehicle).

and whether you want to do planes only vs ground/planes matters as well. easier to just buy a top tier plane and get going since AirRB is limited to one spawn anyway vs GroundRB where you need multiple vehicles to be effective (and having just 1 tank and that's it will hurt your team)

[MashedPotato74]

My advice: Just buy premium time if you are going to purchase anything at all, premium time makes the grind 10 times easier. After rank 4 repair costs of tanks become unbearable if you don't have premium bonuses. If you are going to buy a premium vehicle just buy something that you will enjoy playing because you are going to play it a lot to get the benefits but it's not very effective even if you get a top tier premium, because you don't have a line up for that vehicle.

TL;DR Premium time will make you suffer at least 100 times less. Fully Free to Play is possible but VERY frustrating and time consuming.

Important! Don't buy Golden Eagles on Steam it's cheaper on the Gaijin store.

[Chaoslink]

If you get in the game, look at the vehicles offered at tier 3 and lower. That's basically the free to play zone. Anything above that requires excellent performance in matches to barely break even on currency. If you want to progress further, you pay for premium time, which around new years or so typically goes 50% off for an average of under $4 a month if you buy the full year. Premium vehicles and the like also go on sale from time to time and you'll know if you want them as you play most likely.

Just know that WWII stuff is where you'll be spending your time. If you're looking at the modern combat stuff, you're not going to be getting into that any time soon without buying it and even then your experience will be poor with a very limited selection of vehicles while you grind out the entire tech tree.

[Harry Nurpplez]

As long as you stay below rank 5 stuff yes it is indeed free to play. Rewards plateau big time after rank 4.

[JuX]

In realistic ground battles you can.

At rank 3 vehicles you will start to struggle obtaining enough silver for the next vehicle to unlock. You can however be cost effective and skip entire tank line and skip crewing terrible tanks you don't want to use, but need to buy in order to progress.

Id imagine it will take few years for you to reach in to the cold war content.


The air battles however seem rather pay-walled compared to ground battles. Requiring you to make triple kill games in order to turn a profit if you die during battle. But can make decent income if you get kills and return to airfield and leave the match to avoid getting killed.


There is also "crafting events" every year which can include cold war vehicles. However you need to get at least rank 3 vehicle in order to participate if i recall. And in a short period of time, turn war thunder gaming in to a full time job to grind them.

Also every year theres 50% off ingame currency on vehicle purchases, so can save ton of ingame currency, by grinding multiple vehicles and waiting for the event.

[Knugen]

Yes, you can play for free.

[MANKIND]

this is not a p2w game, is a pay to end frustration game. If you play completely free dont expect to ever get to top tier without investing your whole free time in this. Even after you get a premium account, and premium top tier planes and tanks, if you dont focus on a single tree you will have a SUPER hard time grinding to top.

[Groucho]

Others said it, but just to confirm, it's a pay to grind, and while some premium veichles may be good, often they're either on par (or in some cases, subpar) to the "free" ones, and the real advange they have is a higher boost for reserch and silver points

[Data-7]

Yes you can play for free if you are masochist and take the game as a job, otherwise prepare for costantly uptier battle, premium tank, premium plane and a never ending grind.
These people just need fresh meat, "standard" players are just for turkey shooting and more you go up more will be hard.

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