To begin though, I would like to talk about why it is a very good game! Free-to-play (F2P) games are becoming ever more popular and WoT has the best design for this game format that I have seen. Other F2P games put up pay walls or exclusive content that restricts non-paying customers heavily and makes them feel restricted. WoT method of drawing payments out of their customers is very well thought out and quite subtle.
In WoT any player can use any tank, once they've unlocked it, and play on any map. The game gives each player so many garage slots so you can have a certain amount of tanks to run around in basically doesn't restrict you very much at all.
So, how do they make their money? They make their money by tempting you in with the accessible and addictive gameplay, which has a great feeling of being realistic, even if it's not - this is a very well designed game! A player can pay to have "premium" membership for a certain amount of time, which gives them +50% experience and money, after each game, which obviously increases the speed at which you can get new tanks. Also, money will buy you more garage slots, for when you fill up your allocation and get tempted into having more variety to play with, and the last main thing a player can buy is exclusive tanks; so I kind of lied when I said any player can use any tank, but these exclusive tanks are generally quite obscure and very limited, with no upgrade options.
So why have I fallen out with the game?
Well, I haven't totally fallen out with it, as I said above, it's a good game and I enjoy trundling around in WW2 military hardware. The problem comes in when you start looking at the tier system they use to balance their games. The games you play have no context, it is purely what the title says, it's a world of tanks, so Tiger tanks end up fighting against other high end battle tanks, and not the tanks they actually fought against - because that wouldn't be fair - and are consequently very average against their opposition. For example, Tiger tanks are so heavily armoured and powerful that they are placed in a tier along side late war and post war concept and prototype tanks, which have been designed as they were intended and therefore generally outshine the Tiger, with it's flat unsophisticated armour and cumbersome manoeuvrability of a tank designed before WW2.
Most battles have a variety of tiers of tank, normally spanning 3 tiers, so you might be a low tier tank in a battle, or "top dog". This is good because it gives variety and forces players to think tactically, but it's terrible because it destroys the historical context even more!
The designers have built a game that is a tank death match, which sounds better to me than the reality feels. I increasingly wish to fight a more historical scenario and not a well balanced death match or king of the hill, with "evenly" matched teams of randomly assorted tanks.
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I feel I've got to a point with WoT where I've got what I want out of it. I've got all the tanks I loved from WW2 and had some great evenings playing with mates. It's so easy to pick up and play that I'm sure I'll dip into it every now and then.
I still recommend this game. It's definitely better played with a group though. Also, I think it's a prime example of how F2P should be done, I really hope other companies looking to build F2P games learn from this (I'm looking at you EA)!
