It's just the fact that ranged is more difficult to handle than melee guys. When people lose in a duel they'll mostly blame themselves, while they'll rage when dying from projectiles, because they may not have done a mistake per se.
Ranged ain't op, it's just a lot more frustrating dying to.
Mmh... I think range is actually OP simply because the range factor isn't taken into account. Ranged shots have to do as much damage as melee blows and hitting must be as easy. It's silly. Melee troops are constantly fighting with situational disadvantages. It's even more unbalanced with monkey archers that will allways flee, constantly keeping their advantage without any skill involved and completly negating the so called advantage of pure melee in a "melee combat". Furthermore, an error in a duel will usually end it pretty fast. An error while shooting...
And this is only about ranged foot troops. Mounted ranged guys are just a cookie for a game design teacher, about the things that shouldn't exist in a game with strong emphasis on melee.
About 2h, I played it and consider it way easier to play than polearm. The lolstab turning + left swing faint is very easy to do and kills about everybody. Just watch Phyrex doing it, literally dispatching half a team with this move sequence. Polearms also have very cheap tricks, but the lolstab works better for me.