The folks behind the Mount and blade Warband: C-RPG mod have been working on a game of their own called Melee: Battlegrounds.
They are in a state of pre-alpha (Which looks better than most Early Access games) and are planning to open their engine up to modders. Both of which are awesome in my book.

They have shown some awesome stuff off so far. See below -

Kickstarter Trailer

Stronghold Mode Trailer




They are planning for a DRM free version of the game to be available via GOG or their website. They are currently on Kickstarter. The game is multiplayer focused however they do plan on having an offline mode.

I have added this to the GOG wish list by the way. :D

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/melee_battlegrounds

Looks awesome. Certainly gonna keep an eye on it.

Thanks for posting this! :D

The engine is a homebrew engine that they've been developing for a couple years. As they continue development on the engine, anytime the developers need something new, they implement it into the engine with modding in mind. In fact, the entire development of the game modes are being built on the modding SDK. This game will have huge potential for spectacular mods.

I have backed this after playing mount and blade Chivalry and WoTR and finding them all lacking in a certain vision, i am very excited!

We're pretty limited in the medieval combat simulator genre, so the more games that come out will give us better results in creating a truly awesome game. However, this game may turn out to be so much more with the Stronghold game mode. I've seen a couple other multiplayer combat/rts hybrids and I've always loved the concept. Looking forward to seeing how this mode turns out.