After many years (been playing since beta) i think i finally have all the necessary experience in order to give a proper review for this mess of a game.


PREMISE:

It is impossible to reach top tier without paying. Get it well in your heads. EVEN WITH Premium it is still STUPID how long it actually takes. In order to reach top tier you will need premium for at least 2 months and MINIMUM a 80 Euro pack for a top tier plane. Note that you will see people going from 0 to Top on YouTube in retarded compilations etc. It is absolutely FAKE and they are doing that ♥♥♥♥ for clicks so please do not buy into it.

Let's break down the math for the US Branch:

1) By playing normally no premium and no premium jet you will reach tier 3. After tier 3 the game will start to become a complete nightmare. Research points will be higher. New planes will be MUCH WORSE as you go on (instead of better) and they will only become usable once you have all upgrades (which take an insane amount of time given the circumstances).

2) Let's say that you invest 1 or 2 years playing casually almost each day and you get to tier 5. This is where it will no longer be possible to progress at all. From tier 5 on out you will be forced to play realistic and you will constantly be put against better planes and players in a completely unbalanced manner.

3) From tier 5 to 8 there are at LEAST 20 ish planes you need to unlock. The medium Research points needed will be 200K / Plane (again i say medium but the actual values are a lot higher). That makes at LEAST 3.000.000 Research Points. Now playing realistic and being a good player with a slight dose of luck means that you will use about 20 minutes / Round to get about 3000 Research points. Again these are medium values. That means that you will need around 1000 rounds (again the actual value is actually a LOT higher). That makes at least 350 hours needed. But wait, there is a twist: this only works on paper; in reality with non premium vehicles and no premium you will have to grind lions in arcade and also the Research points you will get on average will be something more like 1.5 or 1k. Realistically speaking you will have to endure around 1K HOURS (IF YOU ARE LUCKY) of mental breakdown grinding from Tier V to VIII.

4) Since i did not want to have mental breakdowns in order to get an F-16 i bought a pack (the A6 Tram) which allowed me to reduce my ACTUAL time to get to top tier to about 300 hours. HOWEVER I DO NOT recommend buying any packs OR premium simply because there is NOTHING THERE at top tier. I wasted 300 hours and more than 150€ going back and forward only to shoot 4 missiles and HOPEFULLY get a kill over and over and over and over again while 80% of the time i was afk getting to the battle zone because the maps are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

5) You will be constantly outmatched. The Matchmaking is structured in order to make you lose AT LEAST 50% of the time. It's simple math. You will be put with bad players in your team against better planes and better players. It's the same MMR scam system that has plagued the game industry since forever.

6) When you get to top tier you will realize that there is literally nothing there. The F-14 is bugged, the F-16 is bugged, the missiles are bugged, the physics are bugged, the radar is super bugged. LITERALLY NOTHING WORKS. The only area in which the game somewhat works is in SIM mode with proper hardware. HOWEVER fear not, because the Russian vehicles are the only ones that work as intended. They have extreme radar precision, missiles teleport inside you, they are incredibly fast (going way out of the technical specs), etc. etc. (you get the idea)

7) DO NOT BOTHER with Helis. They are there just so the devs can say that they are in the game. The heli modes are absolute total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage. You can only buy the first heli and that is it. It is mathematically impossible to advance in the heli tree. The lowest difficulty does not allow you to do any useful actions or points. You need HOURS of travel time on a round, for 5 to 10 min overall action. Just forget it.

8) Don't even get me started on tanks or naval. They are unplayable. Tanks especially unplayable after a certain tier. The game has no balance and rounds always end up in a camping spam fest. Also the Russian branch (like always) has "magically" the best performing vehicles, when in reality they are absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ compared to US.

With all this said i hope i will save you the time and money. Please go play DCS or Arma. You will have a lot more fun. People don't really like the "hard to swallow pill" and admit that after X amount of hours and money they were simply wrong about the game. It's the sad reality about WarThunder. It could of been an amazing game but it's nothing more than a useless cash-cow for the Snail.

After many years (been playing since beta) i think i finally have all the necessary experience in order to give a proper review for this mess of a game. PREMISE: It is impossible to reach top tier without paying. Get it well in your heads. EVEN WITH Premium it is still STUPID how long it actually takes. In order to reach top tier you will need premium for at least 2 months and MINIMUM a 80 Euro pack for a top tier plane. Note that you will see people going from 0 to Top on YouTube in retarded compilations etc. It is absolutely FAKE and they are doing that shit for clicks so please do not buy into it. Let's break down the math for the US Branch: 1) By playing normally no premium and no premium jet you will reach tier 3. After tier 3 the game will start to become a complete nightmare. Research points will be higher. New planes will be MUCH WORSE as you go on (instead of better) and they will only become usable once you have all upgrades (which take an insane amount of time given the circumstances). 2) Let's say that you invest 1 or 2 years playing casually almost each day and you get to tier 5. This is where it will no longer be possible to progress at all. From tier 5 on out you will be forced to play realistic and you will constantly be put against better planes and players in a completely unbalanced manner. 3) From tier 5 to 8 there are at LEAST 20 ish planes you need to unlock. The medium Research points needed will be 200K / Plane (again i say medium but the actual values are a lot higher). That makes at LEAST 3.000.000 Research Points. Now playing realistic and being a good player with a slight dose of luck means that you will use about 20 minutes / Round to get about 3000 Research points. Again these are medium values. That means that you will need around 1000 rounds (again the actual value is actually a LOT higher). That makes at least 350 hours needed. But wait, there is a twist: this only works on paper; in reality with non premium vehicles and no premium you will have to grind lions in arcade and also the Research points you will get on average will be something more like 1.5 or 1k. Realistically speaking you will have to endure around 1K HOURS (IF YOU ARE LUCKY) of mental breakdown grinding from Tier V to VIII. 4) Since i did not want to have mental breakdowns in order to get an F-16 i bought a pack (the A6 Tram) which allowed me to reduce my ACTUAL time to get to top tier to about 300 hours. HOWEVER I DO NOT recommend buying any packs OR premium simply because there is NOTHING THERE at top tier. I wasted 300 hours and more than 150€ going back and forward only to shoot 4 missiles and HOPEFULLY get a kill over and over and over and over again while 80% of the time i was afk getting to the battle zone because the maps are dogshit. 5) You will be constantly outmatched. The Matchmaking is structured in order to make you lose AT LEAST 50% of the time. It's simple math. You will be put with bad players in your team against better planes and better players. It's the same MMR scam system that has plagued the game industry since forever. 6) When you get to top tier you will realize that there is literally nothing there. The F-14 is bugged, the F-16 is bugged, the missiles are bugged, the physics are bugged, the radar is super bugged. LITERALLY NOTHING WORKS. The only area in which the game somewhat works is in SIM mode with proper hardware. HOWEVER fear not, because the Russian vehicles are the only ones that work as intended. They have extreme radar precision, missiles teleport inside you, they are incredibly fast (going way out of the technical specs), etc. etc. (you get the idea) 7) DO NOT BOTHER with Helis. They are there just so the devs can say that they are in the game. The heli modes are absolute total fucking garbage. You can only buy the first heli and that is it. It is mathematically impossible to advance in the heli tree. The lowest difficulty does not allow you to do any useful actions or points. You need HOURS of travel time on a round, for 5 to 10 min overall action. Just forget it. 8) Don't even get me started on tanks or naval. They are unplayable. Tanks especially unplayable after a certain tier. The game has no balance and rounds always end up in a camping spam fest. Also the Russian branch (like always) has "magically" the best performing vehicles, when in reality they are absolute dogshit compared to US. With all this said i hope i will save you the time and money. Please go play DCS or Arma. You will have a lot more fun. People don't really like the "hard to swallow pill" and admit that after X amount of hours and money they were simply wrong about the game. It's the sad reality about WarThunder. It could of been an amazing game but it's nothing more than a useless cash-cow for the Snail.