Is World of Tanks Pay to Win?

HeatResistantBFG:  I did, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking out my rear end and so I googled definitions of pay to win, went through several and found commonalities throughout them all and that concept was one and not something I had emphasised at first. All of them emphasised either a huge or statistically undeniably better thing, purchasable for exclusively money or as near to impossible to grind as possible. I'm not treating anyone like an idiot and don't see how in any way I am or even could be. I said my stance, I explained it, you presented something you believe to be in opposition to my opinion/stance, I disagree that it impacts it, explained why... Where is that treating anyone like an idiot? Then on win rate curves, I literally talk about that... in the example. Because yes, the reality is balancing a tank across a multitude of win rates can obviously be tricky. A tank can do very poorly with lower win rates but very good with high win rates, so statically it'll be massively underperforming due to more lower win rate players playing it, so should it be buffed? Making it even stronger in higher win rate player hands... which is exactly why I said this is a totally different conversation and yet none of this changes or challenges my point. If you can tell me where/how I treated anyone like an idiot I will happily try to remedy it  

HeatResistantBFG:  I mean that is a fact, so not really a trick. I could have told you that without needing a WeeGee tag. Defining how balanced a tank is or what changes it could do with on the other hand is far more complicated and that is obviously just part of it. 

HeatResistantBFG:    Fair point, I'll add more explanation from my point of view. So the way I see it is if like "Gear", so take something like diablo where gear is levelled and then rarity, the best gear will always be the "rarest" level 70 (Ancient primals IIRC) and to me tier 10 is that ancient primal. This also fits with the design premise of the game from my understanding of it, developed as a player. I'm aware people may not agree with that but it's just how I view it and how it matches the definitions I have found/know of whether or not something is pay to win, and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The balance of premium tanks at their tier is a different question, although it obviously covers some similar areas, but to be fundamentally pay to win it has to meet certain criteria and WoT simply doesn't (in my opinion and matching to the definitions I found which helped form my stance).