O ahoy crypto
I was sort of expecting the same thing but, I guess not the case, really not even as much server variety available now in the US as there was in beta. Also i'm not 100% sure all melee is the proper 'solution' though I would really love to be able to pull up some sorta 5v5 melee or less situations at whim, or 5 v 1 sometimes.
I think part of the reason I don't generally like battle is on most maps it feels like there is this mandatory 3 to 4 minute period where you sit with your shield up and wait behind some rocks for people to run out of ranged weapons or get close enough that they aren't covered by ranged weapons so you can start fighting people utilizing the manual block thing. The other option is either to use a ranged weapon yourself or use a shield.
Using a shield wouldn't be bad, except you can't manual block, so really the most creative thing you can do is double feint people from time to time, which generally gets boring.
I hardly ever use a shield when I play, except really to get close so I can actually play, and even then I usually pick a free shield. But really fighting most anywhere with out a shield and you are bound to turn into a human pin cushion. The funny thing is I love shields and how they look, have always used 1h shield in any rpg's I play that allow it and have loved it in plenty of console style games where you might be blocking/redirecting things. It's just warband's shield use isn't too interesting over time.
If you weren't going to touch archery, some other solutions would be to (and of coarse this is vague and unspecific) improve shield use to make it interesting, and/or provide some additional defense against archery and throwing weapons. I think it would be cool if you could somehow dodge/catch/block 1 of every 2 throwing weapons hurled at you if you did it right. So say a person is standing in front of you chain throwing weapons, if you were good at the timing, you could knock away one of them ( think that lurtz aragorn fight in the lotr movie where he bats away the dagger coming at him)... but if the person throws again immediately you'd have no way to block it.
If that were the case I would tighten up the throwing weapon accuracy, try to make it actually hit the center of the cursor with a narrower throwing box. But that way if you pivot and suddenly see a guy with his throwing weapon up at you, or say while you are fighting a person and someone comes up behind with a thrown weapon up, you can do something about it more so than just trying to use your current opponent as a shield. But you couldn't really block sustained fire or 2 players working together. Again it would work best as something that must be learned as well, not just autoblocked.
So with a shield you sort of inherently have this defense anyway, but again the shield is boring! I know for a bit we had manual block with the shield == reduced damage to the shield at the risk of getting hit, but was removed due to chunkiness, which I sort of agree with, but at least for a time it made shield use more interesting if you wanted it to be, or just the same as before if you held the button down. Perhaps there needs to be more to the melee system first before shields can have additional properties that balance themselves out or have additional mechanics.
You could do something like projectiles are blocked normally but melee hits require manual block or you are faced with a stun that is long enough such that someone can spam you over and over till the shield breaks or you properly block. The stun would need to be animated so you get an understanding that you have or haven't blocked properly.
Well anyway, the archer argument is always the 'fun' aspect. Said to death I guess. Archer can put out killing damage (even if it is not the killing blow) without any danger to themselves and can touch anywhere they can see, esp with a great archer. That's the problem, that's why people get angry the most at them. They are up on a wall and you can't do anything to stop them, where as if someone kills you in melee you know you at least had a chance to get them yourself.
Sure it's historically accurate, but so is dieing of the plague, and that's just no fun at all