I don’t know why people think Hots is alive. This game is dead since December 13, people just can’t understand it. Devs are gone, Kevin is gone, patches will come less frequent. Plenty of good people (pros and players from higher ranks) uninstalled right after the announcement. A lot of players stayed, but the question is for how long. The lack of players is not very prevalent now, because there was Kid event and Imperius was released, but how will Hots look like after first 2 months without any new content? it will definitely happen sooner or later this year! Hots players got used to regular new content, but what if it wouldn’t come? In my opinion we will se serious lack of players in months…
I think servers will be online for a long time, but without players. Maybe some smaller local servers (like the Singapore one) will be closed or merged, but EU or NA will be online for years. Without players…
I think you have no idea how game server works and the difference between Evolve and Hots!
First of all Evolve had dedicated servers. It means that you lease server from the owner. You gain full control, but have to pay for it. In this case Evolve’s devs leased servers from Valve. The key is you never lease server for a day or for a week (especially if you are big company such as 2K)!! You do it for months or years. Servers were shutdown when they had to renew the lease, but the income was lower than the cost.
However, Hots doesn’t have dedicated servers, because Blizzard has its own ones. There are so many servers for all of their games, so maintain a few more is barely noticeable. But it doesn’t mean Hots is alive!