I used to play without spending any money on the game. I had around 8 lines all the way to tier 10 without premium time or tanks, I even almost never used premium consumables or ammo. I think the devs deserve a way to make money on their free to play game, but everything is like 10x more expensive than it should be. Making money at tier 10 was a decent challenge and I often would calculate if it was worth repairing modules or using the rare premium round, etc. It heavily impacted how I played, even though I'd often place around top of the score board.
I stopped playing, but I would continually claim xbl/gamepass/prime rewards for this game like I do any game I might play. A couple friends talked me into coming back and I had been gifted like 65 days of premium and 6500 gold and various tanks. They showed me the FV4211 era 2 tank, and I had half the gold required to buy it already so I did what I never thought I'd do and spent $30 on a single tank.
This tank is very good, and its earn rate on top of premium time makes it practically impossible to not make a shit ton of money. I was literally testing this yesterday. I loaded only premium ammo, repaired modules, healed crew with premium consumables, hull patched multiple times, and would still make disgusting amounts of silver. I was snap shotting Squads of other 4211's without even bothering to aim for weak spots because of premium ammo cutting thru them like a hot knife thru butter. I don't even give a second thought to patching or healing something, it's chump change.
It used to be that premium tanks earned more but were generally a little weaker than their non-premium peers at their tier. This certainly does not seem to be the case anymore. Now that I have a money maker that also feels like a dominant tank in its class, I have no reason to grind other lines anymore. I earned 6 million silver yesterday casually playing with a buddy for a few hours, which I guess I'll use to get the era 1 m48. But really I just plan to grind out free xp for the T95e3 era 1 so I have a couple premium tanks I can bounce between.
I just think it's ridiculous how pay-to-win I've realized this game can be. Back in the day when I strictly played free, I had to be very considerate of budgeting how I played. Now having one dominant premium tank allows me to liberally spend as much premium ammo/consumables as I like and it makes engagements way less technically difficult. I could have saved myself a lot of time and grief back then if I'd compromised my principles sooner.
Anyways, I'm hooked back on this fucking game after years of WoT-sobriety, and they suckered me into dropping $30 on a single digital non-tangible vehicle and it worked perfectly for them. Dammit
