Good game, possibility of being great.

Right now the game is just airplanes.  The combat isnt overly arcade like, but also isnt overly difficult.  You can play it quite easily with a mouse and keyboard ect.

The research is like WOT but the crew skill system is more do it yourself.  

Mechanically its a pretty addictive game, of course once you get out of the lowest rank of planes and start improving them.  Its not jut dog fights.  You have ground targets for the bombers, and bombers can improve their turret gunner skills, who will automatically fire behind you while your aiming the bomber, or can be used manually.  Its a nice addition to dogfights since it gives roles int he game in addition to dogfighting.  There are planes that are just better at dealing wit bombers than the agile and paper thin dogfighters.  Also theres an imbetween assault, who can dog fight decent and deal with ground targets.

My main interest is the hopefully soon addition of tanks and ships.  The airplane battels are fun, but turn those ground targets into real players and this game would be fantastic.

Mainly i like the research and crew skill system, it goes a bit beyond what WOT does and adds a nice amount of decision making.   

If you got $20 to buy a pack its worth a try.  I wouldnt really call the game an open beta, though it is.  Most of the game is missing, everything but the airplanes, which have a good selection of american,british,russian,german, and japanese tiers right now.  Some of the simulation game modes are disabled as well it seems.  Im assuming simulation battles will have you actually landing to restock on ammo and repair.

Oh and the game looks quite beautiful as well.

Pay to win seems to be WOT style "money maker" planes you get when you buy a pack, or use cash shop gold. Theres a premium like WOT, but no special ammo.  The money maker planes are great, but reside as the lowest rank within the tier.

One major gripe that they need to deter is ramming.  Rather than shoot down your bomber, which is difficult to do, people will just fly into it with a cheap fighter.  The few, and i mean very few, times people will actually try to fight your bomber, its actually quite fun, one of the most fun aspects of the game is bombing when your under attack.  Most of the time they will strafe you with bullets before ramming you however.  Such an act need a massive xp and gold penalty.  I cant go a single game without getting rammed on purpose, rather than actually playing the game and dog fighting ect.