I thought the folks behind Mount & Blade came up with a really great idea which they didn't quite flesh out to it's full potential and I wish someone would take that idea and expand on it.

If you haven't played M&B I'll summarize briefly.  Moving around in the world you have a top down (more or less) view of the world map.  You play a specific character who moves around on that map but you also recruit soldiers into your army and they travel with you.  When you fight with another army you load into a battle map and it's sort of a cross between a RTS battle and a action RPG battle.

So you start a battle.  You have your troops and the enemy has his troops and they behave in a way not unlike RTS troops.  The big difference is that you are on the ground with your troops playing your character right in the thick of it all.  And this is what I thought was such a great idea but needs to be fleshed out more.

In M&B you can give your troops commands in battle but it is very limited and you don't have very good control.  For example you can't just select a few guys and tell them to "come with me" or "go attack that enemy unit".  You have a very limited selection of commands which automatically apply to all of your troops or to all troops of a given type (all archery, all cavalry, or all infantry).

Also I thought the AI in battles needed a little more work.  For a standard RTS game it probably would be fine but for this new type of thing where you are on the ground with your troops I think it needs to be rethought a bit more.  It's still a lot fun but it could stand some improvement.

Anyway, I was wondering if there are any other games which have done anything like this.  Not just a few henchmen fighting with you or a small squad but a whole army.  And if there aren't then there should be.  Somebody should shamelessly steal this idea and flesh it out to it's full potential. 

Im a big fan of Mount and Blade, played multiple campaigns and mods for over 300 hours. So far there is no medieval gameplay that compares to that. Warband will come next year but it will still be far from its potential.

Recently I started playing Dragon Age Origins and the first thoughts were: "its awesome, but this type of gameplay is just not fun anymore, imagine if it had Mount and Blade combat gameplay!"

Then I came to the same conclusion as the OP, its far from what it could have been done and unfortunatelly there is still nothing in the horizon with potential to top that.

I too have loved M&B.  I seem to return to playing it every couple of months or so.  Yeah I've looked everywhere for an mmo remotely similar to M&B and haven't found anything.  

closest i can think of is Dawn of War 2. you have stats and equipment like any other RPG, but you control your squads like an RTS, minus the buildings. that and old suikoden on the PS.

If the whole game was muliplayer not just the battles in the expansion Mount and blade would be amazing.   Its still a really cool game. Love the orginality that is so lacking these days. 

Never played M&B, but a pretty decent RTS/RPG/FPS hybrid is Savage 2. It's pretty fluid overall, can play for free. The community is kinda meh, but the gameplay still keeps me entertained.

It doesn't seem like it plays exactly similar to M&B, it's a lobby game, one person on each side is chosen to play the RTS portion, the others play a third-person (or FPS) version on the battlefield. Worth checking out since it's free.

http://www.savage2.com/en/main.php