Excessive Pay-to-win makes people quit

Hi there fellow tankers!

I have been playing world of tanks for over a year now and I managed to learn the game mechanics and slowly reach a green wn8. But no matter how much I love the game, I finally decided to quit because of how unfair the game can be.

I realize that there is no "win button" that you can buy and I understand that if you are a good player, you can still have very good games without paying. But the accumulation of "minor" pay-to-win features will always put you in a disadvantage against paying players.

Here are some of the disadvantages that a "Free To Play" player faces:

• On average, you will play many more games with stock modules than a paying player. Good luck playing a heavy tank with a stock turret and a low penetration gun (IS-M), good luck playing a light tank with a stock engine and a low view range turret. Also, the tier 9 stock grind is generally way too painful.
• On average, you will play many more games with a <100% crew. When you get your crew to 100%, it will be time to move up the techtree line and get back to 90% again. Plus, on average people will have more crew skills than you.
• On average, you will play many more games without the proper pieces of equipment because you can't afford to buy new ones. I can't count the number of games I played with the wrong equipment or even with 1/2 empty equipment slots.
• On average, you will play many more games with inferior consumables. You will be stuck with a broken engine and broken tracks while the other light tank repairs both of them with 1 click. You will be stuck with 3 dead crewmates after an arty hit, and you will be lit on fire more often. Plus, since some players have the firefighting crew skill, they can safely drop the fire extinguisher and pay for food (all sorts of advantages).
• On average, you will be able to afford many less gold rounds than a paying player. Sure, theoretically, you can fire 10 gold rounds per game the whole afternoon. But good luck buying tanks, pieces of equipment and modules for the next 2 weeks.
• Paying players can eliminate one additional unfavorable map from rotation.
• Wargamig is releasing more and more premium tanks that are better than their techtree equivalents in every possible way, and only worse in some irrelevant characteristics (Obj 703 II vs IS-2-II). Plus, 50%+ more credits means that they can even afford spamming gold on regular basis. Before the last HE changes, you could at least tickle an "Obj 703 II" with HE, now good luck hitting its almost inexistant pixel cupolas.
• The new "Field Modification" system that they announced recently means that free to play players will struggle to pay experience and credits to unlock the feature and to buy the extra equipment. If you can't afford this, you will be running a multipurpose equipment loadout on your light tank, while the ennemy light tank choses a 100% scouting loadout when getting an open map, and a 100% damage loadout when getting a city map. Same goes for mediums, heavies and TDs.

I know that a lot of you guys buy premium time and premium tanks and I don't blame you for it. If there was an online payment method for WOT in my country, I would probably do the same.

Also, I do my best to benefit from the special occasions (consumables sales, christmas bonus etc…), but the gap between F2P players and paying players is becoming way too wide.

Hundreds of free online games are surviving with non game-breaking monetization models. Besides, many of us would prefer a fair paying game (one time purchase, or even subscription) over an unfair free game. But wargaming's greed is sadly pushing many players to quit a game that they truly love.

I apologize for the long read and I'd like to hear your opinions.