So we won't talk about Warband the whole point of the game was adding Mutiplayer to Mount and Blade.
. There is only one other game with arguably as good as melee as warband, which is Mordhau but unless something in Mordhau changed the skill ceiling is a bit lower. Also can't support the 125v125 Battles Warband had.
Bannerlord doesn't appeal to any of the main types of players, the Tryhards don't like the melee, The casuals (which i fall under at the moment) don't like getting pub stomped in 6v6 cause clans. The community servers like Jailbreak and stuff can't even excist in Bannerlord. Battle gamemode a high player count one life gamemode which allows players or organize, have skill show up but allow bad players to get kills. Just alot of stuff that made Warbamd mutiplayer last for 7 and half year before the player counts started dipping.