*Hyper-edit

To get the highest level tank, on average for an average f2p player with an above average game, it will take about 900 hours to get the highest level tank in a tree. For a game where your k/d is 2/3 (maybe a little below average) is 1600 hours. Don't do this. This economy is trash.

*Edit

I have swapped this from "positive" to a negative review after their post on the 19th of May. The devs have essentially told us how they "view" War Thunder currently as being in a relatively good state economically which is without question wrong. This is a game I haven't really recommended anyone play for quite a while because the economy is so bad, but the Devs think that the grind isn't "too long" for a free to play game. It will take over 100 hours for the average player to get to top tier without premium. This includes a vehicle and premium status itself. The reason I play it, is because I don't really care about unlocking vehicles in a remotely timely manner, I simply like the gameplay of realistic ground battles, but this is outrageous. The grind for researching vehicles is so bad that even with premium, and a premium vehicle, that is roughly what it feels like maybe a free to play player should experience, but it feels slow even for that status. I'm an above average player and even with a premium account and vehicle, I wouldn't put money on being able to get a top tier vehicle in 100 hours of gameplay because the grind is that bad. With all of my time in this game, you'd think I'd have everything unlocked right? Wrong. I have fewer than half the ground vehicles unlocked and I don't play air or sea. Then there is the money aspect of the economy called "Silver Lions" which I'd say you get a sufficient amount of after match, except for the fact that every time you lose a vehicle, you lose money, and even if you do well, you need to spend Silver Lions to re-stock your ammo spent in the last match. Of course, to increase your survivability you could buy bushes for 500 Golden eagles. Which hides a portion of your tank with a bush. It use to go away after 300m which made it at least tolerable, but was still an advantage, but now there is no distance where it goes away giving people who bush their tank up a considerable advantage. I can spot people using bushes at 1.5km out because I have played way too much of this game, but an average player would never be able to see a tank well bushed at even 800m.

Then because of this lack of hope that players have, a great deal of top tier is filled with premium vehicles. Since people buy only one of these 60 - 70 USD vehicles people leave the match after dying making sides wildly unbalanced, reducing match length, and ironically, reducing the amount of Silver Lions and Research Points that are possible to get as those values are also based on how long you stay in the match. Which, should make better players earn things faster, and earn more money which makes sense, but with most of the team having low vehicle count, you will be losing more money than you make because you have no team to support/suppress the enemy team allowing for spawn camping to happen very quickly.

Then you have spawn camping, I don't know how the issue would exactly be addressed, but it is a problem. On some maps from over 1.5km away you can shoot into the other team's spawn. If for some reason you still want to play this game, note that you have 20s of spawn protection, but that is only if you don't move. If you move more than a few meters, you will lose it. There are also bugs like ghost shells (where you fire and the shell doesn't render on the server, but your reload time does). Then you have CAS spam which is a huge problem in ground realistic. There are helicopters, planes, and jets that can basically wipe out tanks without any real challenge, and tanks have a hard time dealing with flyers. While realistic, it isn't exactly fun to be obliterated by vehicles that you can barely see, and can't deal with.

*Old Review

I really wish there was a middle review as I believe this game deserves that. The game is quite fun, but there are a few cons to it that may be to big for most people. The grind, while you may not notice it at first as for the first or second tier it isn't that bad, but as the game progresses it becomes much harder to the point it feels like buying premium is the only way forward without sinking many hundreds of hours into the game. The second is a lack of realism, while not necessarily bad, it displays all tank stats, and the armor at least seems to be off by a bit. The repair costs in the game become untenable if you are not doing well later on in the game. These repair costs you must pay after a certain amount of deaths the tanks have as each one does a few free repairs. Later in the game though without premium if you are doing only ok, you could still lose more money than you make because of these costs.