I have a couple of days of gameplay in air and tank battles, and I now understand why the game is free. F2P players with new vehicles that aren't fully upgraded, or F2P players going up the tech tree stuck on bad vehicles are food for paying customers in op premiums or fully upgraded vehicles. And the game is a slow, frustrating grind. This is because new, non-premium vehicles come stock, you have to research every little module from new engines to useable shell types. And those modules drastically improve the performance of the tank more often than not. To get a new vehicle in the first place you have to pay for an extra crew slot with silver lions(sl), research the vehicle with experience(xp), buy the vehicle with sl, and then crew the vehicle for even more sl. And if you're new it can take days to get enough xp and sl for a vehicle that isn't a pre-WW2 low-tier piece of garbage tank/plane that is not enjoyable to use fully upgraded let alone stock. The game is also very slow-paced. In ground realistic battles you will usually trundle along for 5 minutes just to get shot halfway across the map by a sad man who paid real money to have pixel bushes on his tank to obscure your vision of his tank, giving him a distinct advantage over you. In air realistic battles, to have fun you usually have to climb for altitude. So you angle your plane facing 20 degrees upwards and fly for 7 minutes only to be outclimbed by a premium like the XP-55, which then dives on you and destroys your plane. And did I mention there are repair costs for destroyed vehicles and timers to play the same vehicle twice in a row if you die too fast?