Using classic Outlook for Windows in business environments
Interesting sort of workaround... if you open outlook.com in your browser and log in, Outlook 2013 will stay connected and let you use it for your hotmail account...
That's a bit of a red herring. It's like slamming a car door a hundred times to see if the door will lock. The "chance connections" you are getting are not full connections. Microsoft has been crystal clear that, if you get connection now, you will eventually not get a connection as they are phasing out exchange server connection authentication that is not the newer OAuth or OAuth2. Since they have disabled the ability of Outlook 2013/2016 to update that authentication in Exchange servers, even registry hacks get re-written by Microsoft "security updates", or superseded by new keys in the registry.
Eventually they will force obsolescence of your POP and IMAP servers, supposedly to prevent hacking of your accounts. However, by people trying to keep repeatedly signing in to the exchange servers, they are unwittingly helping Microsoft with their efforts to prove how insecure they are and why all authentication should be updated. Because, IF you DO connect, you are helping Microsoft prove how hackers can log onto your servers if they try it enough times.
The really stupid thing is they could have, and should have updated this security without forcing everyone to use their servers and services. This will eventually be seen for the transparent money grab that it is, and, as I keep saying, I will be waiting for the inevitable class action.
In the meantime, be forewarned that POP and IMAP are both headed for obsolescence on Microsoft platforms. How soon? Nobody knows for sure. They've been talking about it for 3 or 4 years now. But rest assured, they will be happy to sell you cloud storage, not to mention regressive subscriptions. And those subscriptions will rescue you from the ignominy of controlling and organizing your own data on your own storage as, of course, it is better to pay for cloud storage.