I'm feeling frisky so here is my experience with world of tanks in the last half year. The game is addictive due to it's fluke. In a game where you can feel robbed you can also feel genuine laughter when a shell which should have done nothing of value causes an ammo rack explosion. Or you're the last person on a team and go and kill everyone left (T54 drivers only, anyone else need not apply).
The game has some fairly good maps, though they all follow the basic right, centre, and left pronged attack routes.
You've got several tech trees to unlock for different roles. Tanks (sub tree'd into light, medium and heavy) make up the mainstay as the game name suggests. For some reason Wargaming figured they could balance smaller tanks by giving them speed, pretty much like IRL. This goes horribly wrong when speed doesn't save you from horrid death. As such scouting and using the light tanks is a pain and certainly ending in death. The maps aren't big enough to truly reward a team with scoutings extra situational awareness.
Mediums make up the main bulk of the forces, simply because they make up the main part of the levelling trees and the heavy tanks have a huge EXP unlock curve. As such you'll see a lot of people switching to their medium tanks to raise money and premium EXP to help with their heavy tanks. They're fast, and trade armour for extra firepower. (Quick note that a tier x medium is equivalent in most ways to a tier x-1 heavy).
Heavy tanks take on the breaching role due to good vision range, low rate of fire and heavy hitting guns. Their extra armour is the only thing stopping them dying so quick due to being so clumsy. That said a well played medium can literally run rings around a heavy tank quicker than its gun can swing round so that's always fun.
Tank destroyers are just tanks minus the turret, the gun is fixed coaxially to the hull. They tend to follow the opposite rule, a TD of tier x will outslug a heavy of tier x+1 and medium of x+2. Assuming frontally shooting at range. Closer in the lack of turret leaves them open to being shot in the treads and thus they can't aim - allowing rear firing. TD's tend to focus purely on frontal armour due to this. If you can get behind one you win.
Lastly, Self propelled guns. You sit in a position semi safely, in a top down CnC style artillery mode laying down fire from range. If you play this class I'll try my best not to strangle you IRL. (Only kidding - I won't try.) The class is arguably broken and causes me pain and suffering on an untold scale.
So all of the above classes (apart from TDs) are then sorted into the three available nations. Russians, Germans and Americans. American TDs are not out yet and no word on when they will be - and they brake the rules on turretless slow armoured hulls of death.
Racial traits roughly summed up:
Russians have armour that is more slopped and thinner - giving them similar protection to the yanks and Germans without the extra weight, as such in general the most agile tanks. This is then built on by the fact their guns have fairly terrible stock accuracy lending themselves to closer dogfighting. Russian heavy tanks are god tier, Russian medium tanks are close to god tier (except the T54 which is above god tier). Russians favour equal protection in the hull and turrets on their tank.
Germans have slower tanks with much thicker armour. They rely on superior DPS through rate of fire and accuracy. They pretty much suit a hybrid TD/Tank player due to the way you end up shooting from extreme range stationary. Their tier 10 tank is a mobile fortress of doom with arguable usefulness. They typically have less well protected turrets in relation to the hull.
Americans are mad and can't design a tank for toffee it seems. None of them excel or stand out. They favour turret protection over hull, which can be played off to great effect in many of the tanks due to having a good gun depression and being able to only show their turret as you go over a hill and still get a shot off. All of the tanks under tier 8 are undergunned. They have average speed and armour between the German and Russian tanks, and the worst guns. Somehow this is balanced or something. I drive them for self loathing purposes. (Only gem in the rough is the M4 Sherman with its 105mm Howitzer which strangely enough is an infantry support tank - but don't tell anyone at wargaming.)
Tanks which stand out for being good:
T34 w/57mm to T54 (entire Russian medium tree)
IS3/4/7 - possible IS too but I think its fairly well balanced with the Tiger and T29 in its tier. (High alpha low DPS guns, excellent armour and fast for a heavy)
M4 Sherman w/105mm (HE shell lobbing, who cares about aiming)
Panzer 4 (Excellent 75mm L70 gun for ultimate tier 5 sniping.)
Stug III (Same reason as the Panzer 4)
Su85 (Lowish tier TD with a 107mm gun, effectively a T34 with the gun from the KV3 on it)
KV w/152mm HE (Again who needs aiming when you can throw a baby sized plastic explosive charge at someone)
Tanks which stand out for being awful:
T34/30 American heavy tanks (The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)
Panzer II/III (Tanks which IRL shot horses and peasants are ineffective against armour)
A20 light tank (Wargaming decided that to access the god tier Russian medium tree you must prove worthy by avoiding suicide by grinding through this tank)
Hetzer (Must have a moped engine - too slow and waiting in ambush rarely helps as you end up with a worse gun than your opponents)
Maus (special mention because it attracts attention and in combat is less useful unless people play it as a mobile wall)
Tiger (gets another special mention because you start off with a terrible gun/turret - not until you unlock the 88mm is it worth using)
ALL SPGs FOR REASONS EARLIER
As far as early game everything is pretty irrelevant, all the tanks shoot and kill and nothing stands out until tier 4/5.
Game has 3 modes per se, 3 man platoon mode, 15v15 company mode and free play.
Game mechanics are as follow; both teams get 15 tanks supposedly balanced, you start near or on the flag you have to defend. You either kill all the enemy tanks or sit your tanks in their circle unopposed for a set time. Rounds last 15 mins and there is like 10 maps. Future modes will include king of the hill with respawning, historical battles (think 2 tigers vs 50 T34s), probably lots more.
Maps are currently set as 1x1km grids with no intention of increasing this due to a engine limitation - tl;dr terrible Russian engine.
There is a USA, EU and Russian server. The game is gold on the ruskie one, and EU and American probably going gold in April. It will include a full wipe of stats and anything gained.
I think that covers most of it.
