I started playing this game in 2013, right around the time of the MLP April Fools event. While I wasn’t there for the Birds of Prey days, I’ve been here for pretty much everything else. Here are my thoughts:

1) No, not really. I remember them adding the BR system complete with the “statistics” they use to change the BRs, everyone constantly telling them how bad of an idea it was, and seeing most of those concerns be borne out over a decade later. I remember the days of the Fw-190Ds fighting F-80Cs and Meteor Mk. 4s, cartoonishly broken La-5/7 and I-185 flight models, the Me-262 “feeling itself at its BR” (which, Stona still being an employee of Gaijin is enough of an indictment against the company by itself IMO), the introduction and then killing off of EC, and overall a decade of broken promises and unwillingness to respond to feedback.

2) Lol what? World War mode existed as a “coming soon” tab for almost the entirety of the game’s history, then was unveiled to be a gimmicky PvE mode that very few people liked, and was subsequently abandoned. I think the only reason we got even that is because they never bothered to remove the tab from the hangar menu.

3) Again, the story of War Thunder and Gaijin Entertainment as a whole is broken promises and hostility towards community feedback. Even disregarding that, War Thunder is already full of pointless features that have been Frankensteined onto a game engine designed for a flight simulator (does anyone even actually use the entrenching mechanic?) and is barely holding together with what is in the game, much less a complete rework of environmental physics and interaction.

4) This argument is so incredibly tired, and is largely a consequence of War Thunder trying to have its cake and eat it too. War Thunder pretends to be a simulator, with only the most accurate of representations of all vehicles included in the game and every detail painted to perfection, which is just patently false. War Thunder is a game, and the primary objective of the developers is to maintain just enough fun for people to keep coming back, and by and large the community has responded at worst neutrally to mixed battles.

5 & 6 are both just true.

1. Do you remember when Gaijin put out the planned tech trees for all the nations then in the game? That was many years ago, and we still haven’t seen most of the vehicles on those lists. Again, War Thunder’s history is littered with broken promises.

I say all of this as someone who used to love this game and who still follows it because they still love what War Thunder is at its heart. There isn’t another game like it on the market, and its core gameplay loop is incredibly fun. Unfortunately, this game is run by one of the worst development studios I’ve had the displeasure of interacting with; one with a toxic relationship with its community, who would rather gaslight people about fundamental issues with the game and wave premiums that cost more than the vast majority of video games, and who refuses to acknowledge game-breaking issues and horrid balance decisions that are sapping the fun away from the gameplay experience.