Background

I've been playing world of tanks off and on for years at this point. I average between a 2200 and 2600 WN8 depending on tank/attitude. The last time I stopped was just before wheeled vehicles were introduced into the game. I have always played on the NA server but after a move I'm starting over on the EU server.

My Experience

The short version – it has been worse than brutal, it's been abysmal. The lower tiers are alright. They're more or less as I remember them with minute differences (definitely more seal clubbers than I remember) and the usual weirdness that occurs with newer players doing dumb or unpredictable things. However, once I step into tier 8 or higher battles it has been terrible. So what is it that has made them so terrible?

Well, the most irritating thing about world of tanks has always been the continual introduction of overpowered tanks and the lopsided matchmaking it creates in random battles along with the large disparity in skill levels between players on teams. This hasn't changed. However, in the past, if you watched better players or played with them and learned from them, you could improve and bring up your win rate to be better than 50%. I could comfortably cruise around 58-60% most of the time, but not anymore. This was even easier at the higher tiers because the players would be somewhat more competent and as such become more predictable. But this too seems to have changed.

In higher tier battles I remember them taking longer and having more close games. You definitely would have your share of blowouts, but now 80-90% of the games I'm playing at tier 8 or higher are blowouts. They're over in less than 5 minutes with a score of 15-5 or worse. With wheeled vehicles they really start to become a threat around tiers 7/8 and upwards. In the hands of a relatively competent player they're devastating. But it's not so much that they alone change the game, but rather that they just make the game's worst features more prominent. They speed up games dramatically by allowing players to instantly reveal all or nearly all enemy positions with impunity throughout the entire game.

Now I'm sure with the pandemic there's a lot of terrible players getting back into the game who just don't know what's going on anymore, but for me personally the World of Tanks experience has been abysmal lately. Almost approaching unplayable. Playing through blowout after blowout isn't fun especially when you're doing all the right things and it just doesn't matter anymore because your team is dissolving within the first minute or two of the game or because you're having to race to the enemy redline just to get in a lick of damage.

Even watching some of my favorite streamers like skill4ltu, I've noticed them getting more frustrated than I remember them being a couple years back and playing through a lot of bad games. So I feel like it's not just me. What do you guys think?