good fun for no money

AWESOME!

I love the combination with tanks och planes :D if you played and liked World of Tanks uninstall that game i install this one instead.

Gather round children, and I shall tell you about... War Thunder.

Once upon a time, there was a flying game. Unlike other flying games of the time, this flying game could actually be played with a mouse and keyboard. The controls were really tight, amazing, even, for those that always wanted to play a flight game without dropping money on a good flight stick. It was a beautiful game, not just visually, but it was amazingly fun. It ran well. Everything could be bought quite cheaply. All in all, it was everything a free to play should be, and there was much rejoicing.

At some point in time, Gaijin decided it wasn't just enough to have a fun game that everyone loved to mess around in. They had to have a meta-game. So they started messing with the flight models in arcade mode, where nobody really wanted realism. They took away the massive bomb-blasts that everyone loved, and made it so you had to hit every ground target dead center with a 250kg bomb or bigger in order to kill it. Maybe people were farming too much. Maybe people ground through the aircraft trees too fast. Nobody knows the reason, but we all know we don't like it.

But they weren't done ruining the fun. They implemented new mechanics in arcade that made it revolve around dive-bombing B-17s that could end the game in the first five minutes. You can't dogfight anymore. You can't. If you do, bombers will end the game before you get more than a handful of kills. They expect you to do nothing but chase bombers that dive as fast as your fighters can, and even if you kill them all, the bombers on your team will probably end the game anyways. Oh boy. It's been like this for six months.

A number of the flight models are broken. They just don't work. Planes are put into the game with flight models that make them virtually unplayable, but players are expected to use them and progress through them to the next plane. The F-82 Twin Mustang, the Mosquito, and a number of other aircraft are just broken. They've been in the game for months, and there is no telling when they're actually going to get fixed. Some of the planes ( Like the XP-38 ) were ones you paid money for, and they were STILL broken. They took money for a plane you could barely fly, and only fixed it around five months after it was put on sale. Good times.

The ground forces is fun, initially, but that wears off quick when you realize it's an alpha masquerading as a beta. Tanks flip over if you take some turns just a little too fast. Some tanks don't have damage models. You can shoot through the ground. You can fall through the ground on some maps. Just straight up 'fall through the earth' clip mode. I feel really bad for the people that paid sixty dollars for a ground forces tank package 6 months ago, because they're going to be waiting another year for a functional game.

The grind at tier 5 becomes some sort of Sisyphean task that no sane person should do. To unlock the first module on a tier 5 jet, you're looking at around 18-24k per module. Without premium game time, you'll make around 2k experience per module. To unlock enough modules to make your plane as good as the people you fight, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of experience points. To unlock new jets, you'll need anywhere between 200-350 thousand experience points, and a 1.5 million credits. This is a lot.

Repairing some planes can cost between 40-80k PER DEATH. This means you can spend months grinding your way to late game planes that you can't even fly because you quite literally can't afford it. Oh, and Korean War era jets end up fighting WW-2 era planes and jets somewhat regularly, so don't go into this hoping for some historic WW-2 jet action. You won't get it.

Gaijin says they want critique, and that they welcome player feedback. They don't. They moderate their forums quite heavily, and delete, lock, and edit every post that critiques the game. Disagree with a moderator about game balance? You might get banned from the forums. It doesn't matter if you're polite or not. It doesn't matter if you're right, or not. All that matters is that you disagreed with Gaijin, and you disagreed with their staff. God help you if you tell a joke.

The Russian devs tell us basically nothing. Half of what we find out comes from players going onto the Russian forums and using Google-translate to figure out what's up or why something's broken. They just don't care about communicating with the Western European and American playerbase at all, or pretty much anyone else, for that matter.

If you play this game, don't put money into it. Just don't. They're killing the playerbase slowly but surely, and the only reason I'm playing ( after putting a few hundred bucks into it ) is because I already have almost all the planes I want. If you play, stick to the early tiers. You can unlock a fair number of early prop planes for free, and the early tiers are the most fun. Just don't be tricked into thinking that early fun is present in the higher tiers.

Edit/Update: As of late 2014 and early 2015, there has been some considerable improvements on the part of the developers to adress the issues that me and many other reviewers have outlined in the past. The representatives are more involved with the English speaking community and most of the balance issues are being corrected, albeit slowly. With the addition of the US Army land forces faction as well as considerable efforts, I am not so certain of the not recommended review, the game itself has huge potential and will only get better as more content is created for it. I will leave the review as it is however do take a chance and try the game out since it is free, purchasing something is your decision of course.

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By now most of the reviews at the Store Page of this game are negative, this alone probably communicates what the community feels accurately enough. However most of the highest voted reviews were written as an outrage towards a previous patch which had changed the unlocking method for new vehicles in game. This review will hopefully touch on a different more important issue with this game.

I have played and enjoyed War-thunder for more than a year now, but stopped a while a back due to bad design decisions and overall negative behaviour from the devs. I still followed the forums and various communities however in the hopes that things might get better. At it's core it is truly an incredible game. Even with many difficult issues with the developers, I still find myself missing the thrill of flying or driving well rendered WWII machines.

The most glaring flaw with this could-be-incredible game is the crew behind it. On multiple occasions the team behind the game have shown that they do not respect their player base, ridiculing and mocking them at every opportunity.

Recently after more than two years of outcry and demands from the players, the devs finally agreed to implement a 'Player Council' type of system, we have seen such initiatives from other devs in other games so this was a welcome change. However soon it became apparent that this was yet another PR move that ultimately ended up with an arrogant fit towards the players.

The community council representative that would have been chosen by the community is required (by the devs) to play the game at minium consecutively for 90 days, every day (rumours of 7 hours per week requirement) to simply keep his position. The unacceptable demands and restrictions had began. Also as a response for the currently broken system of balancing vehicles a community manager argued (with terrible unintelligible English I might add) that the community council representative can not simply relay problems of the players, no that's not enough, instead what he has to do is to provide thousand page analysis for all the 350+ Planes in the game and their real life performance to the devs FREE OF CHARGE.

That's right, the developer expects a member of the community to do their job for them free of charge to be able to simply PROPOSE changes to the inherently deeply flawed balancing system. After all that work and effort the devs reserve the right to simply ignore the proposed changes (which is their default behaviour by now)

It is easy to see past their deception. They simply answer like a bully to challenge the community to come up with a better system. “Read more then come back” Funnily enough people did write long essays about certain planes being unrealistic in game, providing photographic evidence. They got mocked in their own threads which then got locked and deleted when they started to be posted around. Devs lock and delete any and all criticism from their forums to provide a 'perfect' atmosphere for new comers, instead of working on the issues that are present in this 'Open Beta' game.

Another salt in the wound is that whenever a huge issues comes up and draws backlash from the players, everyone that complains gets the rough treatment, for months they are mocked and insulted by the team only for them to implement a change in line with the complaints months after, with the undertone that they came up with the idea themselves, or did it out of the kindness of their hearths.

This show of arrogance bordering insulting behaviour is common place today with this game. So as much as I like what the core game represents in terms of potential, such scummy behaviour is unacceptable. As a long time fan of this game (one that was waiting impatiently for the Navy side) and as a customer that spent money on this game; I hope this game fails, not out of spite but to demolish such a negative possible influence on future developers. No matter how good your game is, or how entitled the devs see themselves, it is completely unacceptable to insult, mock and belittle dedicated fans.

Thank you for reading.

I have way more hours than Steam says, simply because I started playing before it was even on Steam. But thats not my point really.
I have probably put a thousand hours and several hundred dollars into this game, and if you had asked me 6 months ago if I recommneded it, I wouldve said yes, all the way. But now, the game is a broken mess that infuriates me more than it entertains me.
Where do I even begin?
Country bias is strong, being a Russian game, the Russian planes are incredibly overpowered, and dont even think about getting within a kilometer of a Russian tank.
The customer support base is terrible. Instead of rolling out tweaks and fixes that players have been asking for for over a year, they simply add more planes to the Russian tree and maybe a few to the others and further mess up the system that is so badly in need of balancing.
To do anything above tier 3 in anything short of a human life time you will need to pay for a premium account, and even then, you better play realistic battles (which in my opinion are not nearly as fun as Arcade), AND EVEN THEN you better have paid $20+ for a Premium Aircraft.
No, this game has just become too much of a "Pay to Win" cash cow for Gaijin, rather than focusing on making it a fun experience for everyone, no matter what country or game type someone wants to play.
I think the best line I've seen that descibes this game now is,
"Grind 'till you die...
or pay up."

*EDIT*

This may be a petty gripe, but I think it sums up how little the developers care about their user base. Most online games give stuff away for the Holiday season, right? Gaijin begs to differ. You can earn 2 very low tier vehicles.... if you complete 19 challanges that are released over 19 days. NINETEEN. And they are shoot down 30 planes in "inset plane here" and destroy 40 tanks in "insert tank here."
Not only are the rewards crap, the amount of work required and amount of time you have to grind is insane. No discounts on the overpriced planes, overpriced premium accounts, or overpriced premium currency have been offered either.
So Gaijin's "Merry Christmas" to their user base is basically a giant, grindy middle finger. A rather apt comparison to what the entire game has become over the last year.

I was a hardcore fan of this game. Initially when I acquired the hours on this game it was amazing. The aircraft where historically accurate and amazingly detailed. The gameplay was fun and teams were developing nicely. Now it’s a piece of trash. Everything has been nerved except anything Stalin would get sexually aroused by. The gameplay has become so unbalanced that the USSR team win realistic battles 90% of the time!! The combat ratings are so broken my tier 2 FW will be put against tier 4 aircraft which outperform it in every way other than fire power. The game has become unplayable and this is my 2nd and hoefully final rage quit.Finally I will say that this game has great allure, because of the detail and effort Gaijin put into the game. I cannot understand why they are ruining it with stupid issues such as a biased combat rating and buffing a particular team. You want to play as the USSR this game is 10/10. Play as any other team prepare to crash and burn. Enjoy!

There are three kinds of people in this game;

Skilled Pilots,
Rammers,
And Russian planes.

I hate Russian planes.

Game used to be very fun, but it has turned into a monster grind. As others have stated, I don't mind them encouraging payment, but the prices are too high. I'm just glad I unlocked quite a few planes before it became this grind fest.

Do like having russian potatoes shoved up your anal passage? Then this is a game for you. Overwhelming bias and terr- DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM COMRADE (or go to gulag in sibera)! THIS IS GREATEST GAME TO EVER BLESS EARTH! WATCH AS HAND OF STALIN REACHES DOWN FROM HEAVEN TO GUIDE YOUR SHELL FOR VICTORY! FLY CONCRETE WALLS AND DRIVE BUNKERS IN ORDER TO KILL FACISTS AND AMERICAN PIGS! ARE YOU FACING TROUBLE AT HANDS OF FACIST OPPRESSORS? DO NOT FEAR COMRADE, STALINWOOD WILL NOT BURN! YOU MUST GET THIS GAME FOR GLORY OF MOTHER RUSSIA! (or die at hands of NKVD for crimes against the state)

this game... was good. at one point the game was mostly balenced and playable, mostly. it was one of my most loved games and now its just horrible, grindy, repetetive and all round boring gaming experiance, even at low tiers it is obvious what planes dominate the sky *cough* russians *cough* . and you cant really argue with planes such as the Yak 9 T/K exsisting, which have really only been made more overpowered after "nerf". The problem is that it appears that they have made the grind to long to keep interest in playing, and they have made it clear that they have a biased towards planes and nations. i do no t recomend playing this game untill one of either things happen.
1: Matchmaker redesigned
2:they listen to the players who are PLAYING the game and giving CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM to help move the game forward, but i highly doubt that this will happen...

War Thunder in a nutshell,

Planes;
When your pilot gets killed:"WTF I call hacks! This game sucks!"
When you kill the enemy pilot:"Take that sucker, I knew my CoD skills would work here."

When you get rammed:"Frickin noobs everywhere"
When you ram:"It's called a kamikaze brah"

When you get killed by rockets:"F******g rocket spammer,rockets are bs!"
When you get a rocket kill:"MWHAHAHAHA"

When you can't hit ground targets with a bomber:"I swear if those tanks stopped moving I would get them"
When you hit ground targets:"Guess I have to much skill, WW2 is sooooooo easy, I would have bombed every frickin tank"

When your wing gets ripped off:"WTF, ARE THESE WINGS MADE OUT OF PAPER, UNINSTALL!"
When you rip off an enemy's wing:"Pfft, I'm to good"

When you get matched with a plane 2 tiers higher than you:"F***, thx Gaijin"
When you get matched with a plane 2 tiers lower than you:"Poor guy maybe I won't go after him (Said no one ever)

When somebody cleverly maneuvers you:"My plane sucks!!"
When you outmaneuver somebody:"Step up your game NOOB!

Tanks;

When you get flipped over:"Plz help, I'll give a free bj just PLEASE"
When you see somebody flipped over:"Sorry dude, I have losers to pwn"

When you get one-shotted:"FRICKIN HACKS AGAIN"
When you one-shot somebody:"Why do I have to aim so good man?"

When you're getting shot from some random place:"WALLHACKS"
When you're hitting somebody and they can't figure out where you are:"2ManyNewbs"

When someone calls an artillery strike on you:"S***, S***, S***!!!"
When you call an artillery strike on someone:"You better not run, you better not hide (You know the rest)"

I hate to play the same tune as so many others, but unlike them I am taking my review and going a step further.

I'm a lover of history, from as ancient as Mayan and Aztec cultures to as modern as it can get when talking current news. I love to know why things happened, the reasons, the causes, the impacts upon how we see things today, and what it can mean for those who care to enjoy their history.

So, as I write this review, keep the words "Historical", "Accurate", and "Fair" in mind. Cause they'll be mentioned a lot.

Historical planes, tanks and ships, all clashing upon one battlefield that allows players to simultaneous and fairly enjoy how these various war machines of history would have performed under the accurate scrutiny of Gaijin's developers who no doubt have the best interest of this game at heart, right? But what game are we playing, if not War Thunder? A game advertised as historically accurate and fair to all countries in how they are represented historically to players? Knowing they're targetting both a large audience who -wants- a fun combat flight simulator game which boasts accuracy; and simultaneously knowing they're targetting the history buffs and adamant learners who want to gleefully roar through the skies as a P-47 Thunderbolt over 1940's Germany. Surely! They would want to represent the lives lost, the battles won, and the ingenuity of men and women of this war accurately, right?

Now, take every mention of those words I told you to notice before, and answer them with "No". This game was praised as the champion against other games like World of Tanks, where World of Tanks and it's corporate model is to force all players into mediocrity and a 50% win/loss range than to be fair (look up Greedy Goblin's World of Tanks article, then you will agree). Even I came in when War Thunder had almost one-quarter the number of planes is has now, and was boasted as being historically accurate.

Those days are long gone, I've put in well over 300 hours of my life trying to enjoy this game. The only times I authentically enjoyed this game is when I broke down and submitted to the mentality of my close friends who call this game by it's true name: "GLORIOUS SOVIET UNION COMRADE VICTORY SIMULATOR"*. By this, I mean, I started playing nothing but Soviet Russian planes, I watched in initial glee as my scores skyrocketted. I went from being the bottom 5 players to the top 5. Then the horror hit me. I was indoctrinated. I had spent cash to turn around from the planes I -wanted- to -desperately- enjoy, yet I can't due to the GSUCVS* and it's portrayal of Russian warplanes as nigh-unstoppable machines of complete devestation.

I spent cash to enjoy the best of the United States circa 1940's era planes I always wanted to fly; I spent cash and time to work up the German Luftwaffe planes, where I finally hit my peak into indoctrination. That is when I spent cash to play Soviet Russian planes like everyone else, just so my above-average flight skills aren't being held back because a single Russian plane can endure over 1000 rounds of .50 caliber anti-air machinegun fire. So my enjoyment and money spent on my "dud planes" with other factions was turned around and then I learned the "glory" of the GSUCVS*. It's taken me some time, it really has. But I can finally say, without the shadow of any doubt...

This game as made for Russians, by Russians, and most likely at gunpoint by Joseph Stalin himself, or at least by the specter of Stalin. The only hope to redeem this game would be to overhaul it, cut out the busywork of all the "prototype" and "testbed" planes that keep you from enjoying the plane you really want. Cut out the horribly overpowered and unbalaned and unfair Russian cheat engine for Russian planes. And lasty, to apologize to every player for their grievous wounds inflicted upon trying to represent "accurate" history.

Until then, I will not recommend this game unless you understand that it is NOT an accurate game, that it is a game made to pander towards old Soviet diehards who can't see Mother Russia as anything but completely indomitable and constantly producing instant-win scenarios. Play it, but do NOT spend your cash. Play it, but do NOT bother commenting on their EU/USA forums. They will simply mock you with sock puppets while they ban your forum account.

This is an amazing game. Really! You will not find another game similar to this one. It is one based more on skill than anything else. No stupid reaction shots or super quick decision making. With one good shot, someone(Including you) can be killed. If not, it may take minutes to destroy a wing or light them on fire. But, then the downsides come in. Recently, they completely overhalled the matchmaking system. Maybe you've heard. They collapsed the 20 teir system into 5 teirs. And if that weren't bad enough, they changed the way of getting planes as well. Instead of leveling up a teir, which may give you 2-3 planes at once, they made it so that you "research" each plane at a time. This makes it unbelievably grindy. in the end, it seems like a cheap way to get more people to buy in game "golden eagles" to boost research. WIth true FTP, you will be spending hours and hours just to get a planes in low teir. If you love to grind for hours with the same planes and no real sign of progression, this is the perfect game for you. I continue to play just in hopes they change it. But as for 10-19-2014, they haven't.

Update on 12-21-2014
As of the new update...I am speechless. Gaijin realy, really hates this game. They, for some reason, feel so pressured to release American tanks that they have not a care in the world for anything else. They put in an under-teired plane here, another OP plane over there... You get the point. The banshee...No comment. They feel that a plane that has a rediculous energy retention and almost a thousand kph top speed belongs in the lowest teir of jets. Flown correctly(not that hard) a person can defeat a whole team of German jets. The new British jet doesn't even have a finished flight model. And obviously the worst of all, they have delayed the implication of the proposed "fix" to the battle rating system. That would have made the game half decent again...maybe. But it doesn't matter if they keep the current cash cow of a system they currently have. I rarely...RARELY play this game anymore. It just isn't fun. I have tried realistic battles, and those are better, but seeing planes on my team that are 2 teirs under me when playing just... just isn't fair for them. Arcade, which i presume most players will spend most of their time in, just feels like a huge cluster ♥♥♥♥. All in all, I don't recomment even downloading this game at it's current state. Don't fall for the huge money trap that is War Thunder.

I got banned for reporting cheaters.

10/10 Would get banned again

Only play this game in short bursts. It is fun, but the game is unbalanced and frustrating to play.

This game used to be fun but now i have to fight Canberras introduced in 1954 with my Ki-84 (1944). We don't need new maps, new features, new op planes or useless gamemodes - we need to get rid of the horrible BR system.

this is how you turn a good game into absolute garbage.

broken tank dmg models

airplane stats are like read from a russian propaganda paper

russian tanks who can hit a fly at 1000 meters ( note most russian tanks had no aiming optics, the gunner aimed by looking through the barrel )

if you enjoy a matchmaking that sends ww2 planes vs jetfighter and planes of the corea war era

if you have ghandis patience cause you will get oneshoted more than enough

ingame events which are always very hard or impossible to master.

playing on an EU server requires perfect russian cause no one speaks english at all

developers always talk about "historical accuracy" well might be if you have a framed pic of stalin next to your desk.



i might rant a lil but this is just my oppinion after playing more than a year now.

i wouldnt reccoment to play it

AND I WOULD NEVER RECCOMENT TO SPEND MONEY ON THIS PILE OF GARBAGE

Originally came for the great gameplay and amazing graphics, left when the gameplay went south and Gaijin blanket nerfed everything that wasn't made of Stalinwood.

Originally, a pretty great game. Unfortunatlly, ground forces is clunky, glitchy, and broken. The developer is comptuous and abusive of it's playerbase, and has refused to address multiple gameplay issues that have existed for several patches.