Well, is possible to play vanilla AoE3, without any expansions, and there is a playerbase there, that like pure AoE3. Even being smaller, Microsoft didn’t removed the old ladders. So, now that Microsoft is buying Blizzard, they should restore WoL and HotS, to bring back they lost players.
Don’t expect changes in the game,at most microsoft will push for some funding for e sports or some new starcraft game in many years. Thats the best scenario, most probably is that nothing will change in sc2.
Well they are introducing a new “patch”.