[KaVir]

Now that's interesting, because I believe Inferno was mainly inspired by Avalon. I wonder if they got the idea from DragonRealms, or if they came up with it independently?

Personally I prefer manual control, although if your only option is typing "attack" over and over then IMO you'd actually be better off automating it. Most manual combat systems I've seen do offer various different options to choose from, however, and DragonRealms seems to have several different maneuvers for controlling your actions. They don't appear to differentiate between individual weapon types (in terms of attack options), but there are at least separate commands for unarmed combat, and I really like the idea of supporting grappling moves. Wasn't there once a design discussion about grappling?

Yeah, some of them can be pretty opinionated about narrated combat being better than any form of hardcoded combat. I've also seen people combine the concepts, so that you emote your action and the code performs an appropriate attack, although like any other system it has its pros and cons.