Gaijin has said that progress between different campaigns are not shared, so playing Germans will not help you with your progress in the other campaigns to come. Also, for USSR teams to be filled by bots, people will have to choose to play on the German team and uncheck the “join both teams”.
And surely, all of the reasons you included are reasonable, but one other factor that was shown by the chart is that, you naturally start to struggle if you so choose to play on the USSR team, as the MP41 has the most kills and out of the 86970 matches, USSR only won 38306–over 10000 less wins compared to Germans.
Playing through both teams, this also felt rather obvious, you just find yourself struggling a lot if you so choose to play on the USSR team, which by itself is a good reason for one to just stop playing this faction.
It happens in every game where it’s possible.
Russia could have a massive stealth buff tomorrow and it still wouldn’t get the playerbase to shift back because of fotm groupthink.
It does help you get used to their weapons and general tactics.
Well yes, if more people play germany, their guns will get more kills. If you only bought the russian premium, you play russia. If you only buy the German premium (which a lot of people did), you will play germany. This was decided before they even got the game
their weapons will change throughout different campaigns though, and so will the tactics. Granted that some weapons are likely to remain playable, it is debatable to suggest that the tactics will remain the same when, let’s say, the Battle of Berlin comes out and instead of PzIICs and T-60s, Panthers and T-34-85s are roaming the street and that people get access to weaponries like Panzerfaust.
Also, when weapons of the later years come out, even if players can still play with the older weapons, wouldn’t it be more optimal for them to switch to the newer gears? Say, when you can get your hands on STG-44 or PPSH-41, why not opt out from MP-38 or PPD-40?