Mount&Blade - Warband GDC Hands-On @ Gamespot

Amidst the slew of GDC articles at Gamespot is this hands-on look at Warband, the multiplayer expansion to Taleworld's Mount & Blade, presently in beta. The article is subtitled Castle Seiging, Melee, and Dying Horribly:

In Warband's multiplayer, life is cheap, and death by crushed skull or arrow-in-the-throat happens all the time. In several cases, while we made our feeble attempts to set up ladders, we took well-placed arrows from defending soldiers clean in the face. Warband's archery, like its swordplay, isn't a simple, button-mashing deal--it requires precision and careful timing. Your accuracy when firing an arrow is extremely compromised if you're on the move and will also decrease if you nock an arrow and hold it too long. Fortunately for us, our opponents were already extremely high up the game's learning curve and had no trouble feathering us with arrows multiple times before we made it up into the castle. Once inside, we experienced the chaotic and brutal nature of Warband's melee combat--repeatedly.