Mount&Blade - Warband Preview @ GameBanshee

Brother None has penned a preview of Mount & Blade: Warband over at GameBanshee.  I haven't been paying too much attention to this but I hadn't realised the RPG elements are scaled back for MP:

One unsurprising thing should be obvious from the above description: Warband's multiplayer opts to focus purely on one side of the Mount & Blade experience, that of medieval warfare simulator. Sure, stats are still there for different troops, and you can customize to some extent, but as characters are dumped for every new session, it doesn't allow you to tie a single character to your account, nor does it allow for experience to be gained and progress to be made. There is no imbalance between characters which is a good thing for the multiplayer experience, but also means the outcome of fights is purely dependent on the player's (twitch) skill.