YMMV / World of Warplanes

• Demonic Spiders: Certain planes can quite easily this with a skilled pilot controlling them.The Soviet I-16 (early and late models) and I-17, for instance: average firepower, but alarmingly fast, very agile, AND they're small planes—getting your guns on them and scoring damage can be a nightmare...especially if you're suckered into a turning fight, and have to contend with the other guy nickel-and-diming you to death with his guns. And if you don't mind the altitude and/or speed, you can even be tricked into crashing into the ground or stalling, respectively. On the other hand, pulling this off yourself, AS one of the aforementioned planes is awesomely evil. Bonus points if your victim is in a higher-tier plane than you.
• Dueling Games: With War Thunder, which is partly why this game is overshadowed in comparison to Wargaming's other two titles. ^note  WoT had the advantage in being the first game Wargaming released (two years ahead of War Thunder), as well as having the advantage in marketing and mainstream publicity. Meanwhile WoWs has the edge in the fact that War Thunder, as of the current patch, is focusing on its Ground Forces mode, rather than going for a Naval Combat mode, making Wargaming the undisputed champion here.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Compare this game's publicity to Wargaming's first and third titles. See Tough Act to Follow below for more info.
• That One Level: "National Park" and "Pacific Ocean" maps. Probably not from their difficulty as levels — your main opponents are the other players, not the terrain — but from their sheer repetitiveness: there are relatively few maps in the game, so if your current plane is between Tier III to Tier VII, you can rest assured that you'd get "National Park" for probably at least 75% of your battles. "Pacific Ocean" is basically the same, but for Tiers V to VIII.
  • Additionally, any map has the potential to become this due to the simple terrain - Ground Attack planes suffer on maps that don't provide good ground cover, Fighters suffer on larger maps since they can't get from point A to point B very fast compared to Heavy Fighters (though this isn't always the case), and Heavy Fighters are in peril in maps that DO offer significant ground cover as they aren't very maneuverable.
  • "Winter War" can be quite an annoying map: AA guns for both teams are tightly packed, and in large numbers: fighters at low altitude can be cut to pieces VERY fast if they wander over to the "wrong" side of the map; diving attacks can become suicidal if you don't pull out early—and that's before you're in any real danger of just crashing into the ground! Ground attackers don't get any breaks either—the terrain is very flat and plain, so they're wide open to attacks.
• Tough Act to Follow: It's argued that a combination of this trope and Dueling Games with competitor War Thunder led this title to have a case of Middle Child Syndrome among Wargaming's titles. Just compare the amount of content on this page to the first and third.
• Win Back the Crowd: The October 10, 2017 release of version 2.0 seems to have won the support of many who previously considered World of Warplanes little more than a punchline, saying this should be considered the real release of the game and previous versions should be treated as if they were part of the beta test. Even Jingles, who swore off version 1.0 after becoming highly disillusioned with it, has decided to give the game a second chance.