World of Tanks: Pros vs Cons?

[ETR3(SS)]

WoT has gained notoriety and has me looking into it. The game being F2P really drew me into looking into it more. Having been an avid WoW player for a few years (no longer) I saw first hand the effect of real currency being exchanged for game currency. Now I fully admit to having done this myself, but soon found out that those with the discretionary funds for such a thing ruined the game itself. The casual gamer has no chance of competing with those that will trade real for game currency.

So my question regarding that particularly is how bad is it? In order to advance at a decent rate in the game to you have to invest in it therefore defeating the F2P concept?

I could sign up and find out for myself but am hesitant to go around signing up for accounts with reckless abandon. My concern there being my e-footprint.

But beside that one point what's the rest of the game like? Balancing? Gameplay? Support?

[Sledgehammer427]

The game runs pretty well in my opinion.
Balancing can be a little funky, I haven't played in ages, but when I played, I had a stugIII with the highest level gun, and I kept getting matched with guys who could kill me in 1 shot, and every once in a while the matchmaker felt sorry for me and would put me in a really balanced room, where I could get a couple kills and be happy.
It seems well built the last time I played it, in terms of the kind of fighting. I had a Tank Destroyer 90% of the time so I ended up having a crew trained in stealth, with the camo netting added and some other stuff, so people usually wouldn't see me until I started shooting, and that gets to be kind of interesting.

As for spending RL money for in game stuff, it goes as far as you want it. I've done it myself and it gave me a pleasant boost when I was getting tired of the same crap.