It's not like WoT, or WoWP. In WoWP, you have health bar. Even if you are shooting guy in the wing, it won't come off and guy will not die until his healthbar drops to zero. Which is riddiculous.
In WT, you have three types of gamemodes: arcade (which is a lot more realistic than WoWP, but still planes handle like UFO's compared to sims, you can respawn in other plane), realistic (moar realism, but still designed for mouse shitters; less forgiving flight and damage model, no unlimited reloads like in arcade, you need to actually land to refill ammos and fuel, no respawning), and simulator battles (which are like babbys first sim level of compexity, you still need joystick for that thou, and TrackIR is very userful).
Now the thing about WT is that it is supposed to have tonks maybe this year (closed beta is already rolling) and boats soon™ . Looking at the progress with tonks it will take forever. Tonks are also in three flavours: arcade (errybody is teamtagged if you can see them, respawning, aiming guide), realistic allows for tagging and some respawning but removes aiming guide; sim is sim, you are on your fucking own, no handholding. What is cool about tonks is that in realistic and sim you can play together with planes and have air-ground combat together, player controlled.
There are some things that are shit. Game is grindy. I mean really grindy. Don't go to game forums because devs have their shill drones ready to lick Gaijin anus in every discussion. And mods and admins are leauge of their own. Also devs are still being buttblasted about Erich Hartmann, WWII top scoring ace, and refuse to make him ace of the month ever. And no windmill of happyness and friendship on Luftwaffe planes.