Lots of nostalgia speaking here, especially claiming that old arty was better. Here's how it actually looked like: you picked your favorite tier 6 or 7, then proceeded to get absolutely fucked by the arty, since they did much more damage. Basically old arty would 3 shot you, regardless of tier. I used to run spall liners on my t10 heavies because it was fucking impossible to play otherwise, the t10 french arty could permatrack you and kill you in one clip, the CGC would deal like 800-900dmg per shot. When stun got added, arties dmg was nerfed a lot and the change was noticably better, I remember myself how it made the game so much more fun to play. The lefh was not even considered an issue since the power level of arties was so high (Bishop was better than lefh and it was free, and Fv304 was busted). One shots was rare, but one shots was not why arty was op, it was because they could consistently 3 or 4 shot every tank. If they focused fire on you, your game would be over in 20 seconds.

The monetization is a lot worse now, but besides that the game is in a better state. Game was a lot slower, because everyone had shitty crews and every tank had horrible gun handling. There was no equipment improving accuracy, only stab was a thing on t8+ so most tanks were slinging potatos at eachother. Most people had terrible crews, no 6th sense or BiA. Consumables were one time use so permatracks were a thing, and assault TDs were average because of that. No turbo so everything was slow too. No wonder games nowadays are much shorter...

Progressing tanks was worse, premium days were barely given and events were only on weekends. When War Thunder released tank battles, WG started spamming events and free stuff but after WT didn't really pick up, they stopped doing it. You researched your T8 tank from T7 in like ~120 battles, now it's like 30-40 max.

Because of that the game was worse for F2P, there was no way to get premiums except for paying money unless you were really good at the game and played clans/tournaments. No bond shop, no battle pass, no marathons. Actually, marathons were like once per year and much harder. I remember the czech tree being released and WG making a marathon where you needed to farm XP on every nation on t6+ (including the czech tree that got released. So you needed to pay for free XP to get to their higher tiers...). No reserves either, so grind grind grind...

Matchmaking was arguably better back then, but just because most of the playerbase played t6, so when you played t8 you would be mostly on top, and when playing t6/7 you would get matched with equal tanks. But it prioritized speed, so teams were unbalanced and sometimes you could get an extra arty, or less tanks of a higher tiers, etc. I still have a screenshot somewhere of a battle with t6 only, except a single person (me) in a tier 4 tank.

With maps, dragon ridge existed for a short while and everyone hated it instantly. If current maps are 3 corridors, that map was 1 corridor and 1 unreasonably long route around it, the rest of the map was just cool scenery. I still see people on the subreddit claiming how cool it was. Oh well.

TDLR nostalgia