Well I finally went and gave War Thunder a try after being asked to play it by a couple of my friends on Steam and my impressions of the game aren't really great. First of the way that the battles are setup is simply stupid, even in realistic battles its going to be tier 1-3, if it was just tier 1 vs. tier 1 it would be so much better. Flying a Peashooter vs. a Bf-110 or a LaGG-3 is just...
The reserve planes are junk for the most part and ironically the bi-planes which should be difficult to stall are extremely easy to stall. The damage model (or rather lack there of) is totally absurd, a perfect example of this is from a battle I did yesterday evening. I intercepted a Blenheim in a Buffalo, I managed to do some damage but after a two second burst from the gunner my engine was on fire. Had such a thing happened in say IL-2 everyone would be yelling "HAX!!!!". Frankly if the developers of War Thunder had kept thing the way they where before the 1.37 patch I probably would play it on a regular basis, as it is now however it will probably be nothing more then a game I'll play every great once in a while, and all of this from someone who as only played a total of five hours. Unless Gaijin fix what they have broken, I'll stick with IL-2 1946 with The Full Monty super-mod for 4.12.