Popularity does not mean good.
Neither CoD nor Battlefield even remotely approach my mind as ‘good’ games.
For some whose tastes align - certainly, but I see mechanics in WT being compared to either a significant black mark against those mechanics.
CAS as it is is far easier to use than it would be in real life due to mouse aim controls, lack of wind and ease of aiming in third person. Even comparing CAS between GRB and GSB is night and day at prop tiers, much less CAS between GRB and Il2:GB or DCS or real life (biggest thing missing from real life is the fact that you really dont wanna die. Just spraying tracers into the air was often enough to completely ruin dive bombers attacking tank columns during the allied assault of normandy because they were too scared to approach from proper angles and the bombs went wide and nobody died).
I wouldn’t mind prop tier CAS in GSB as a consequence, if I could play it whenever I want with whatever tanks I could. Unfortunately, I can’t.
Tank gameplay itself is basically the same between GRB and GSB bar a super minor aiming change so my hopes of getting to drive around tigers, T-34s, panthers, KVs, ISes, wacky british things and shermans falls almost solely onto GRB because looking at GSB lineups…

If I want to drive around the sherman firefly, I need to wait 4 days to not be facing tigers IIs, 3 days if I’m fine with facing Tiger IIs.
What about Tiger E?

Panther?

SOL again.
So, I’m stuck playing GRB.
Which i can’t.
Because there’s a yak-9k/UT clicking on tanks with zero effort.
Because there’s an F4U-4, F4U-4B flying around nuking whatever looks tasty. In fact, there’s even Hellcats doing the same since American fighter-bombers are incredibly good with bomb-loads worthy of twin-engine heavy fighters and attacks or even frontline bombers of other nations while possessing incredible flight performance that lets them get in and out of the battlefield before SPAA can even intercept them.
Result:
I can’t play GRB either.
The only game mode that remains remotely playable & accessible is ASB (edit: brain slipped and wrote GSB first) and that annoys me incredibly because I want to be able to enjoy my tanks.