You have any reason whatsoever aside from your own hopes for saying that LiF's combat will be like playing Warband with a shield? The combat clips we've seen so far look nothing like it. And I'm pretty sure Warband wouldn't be popular if it only had autoblock combat, I know I wouldn't play it.
I haven't played enough to talk about feel/balance and such but in terms of basic input its exactly the same. drag mouse up/left/right/down and left click to attack in 4 directions, right click to block.
if anything it should end up better than warband w/ shield since it will have stamina bars, and I asked bobik if shields would have "force fields" like in warband and he said no. so if thats true blocking with shield would be a bit more manual, but I didn't test that.
in what way do you think it looks nothing like it? are you talking about animations wise or something because I don't understand why you would say that.
I agree if warband was autoblock only it would suck, its one of the main reasons I lost interesting in crpg is because shields are the most overpowered item in the game. but crpg is not a real mmo.
PS: i forgot to say there is actually already a shield bash animation in the alpha too