No, not really. The developers are working with Paradox Interactive on Salem online, and it seems have pretty much forgotten about H&H.
The lag is still here, and a small number of players are still playing, maybe 2000 total.
This opens the door to a lot of silly things, like

Building towns on a major river lol
The few players that remain are *very* innovative in cracking open the millions of abandoned settlements though, in the past it was impossible to break into a "Hearth Vault", a vault surrounded by statues, which are unbreakable.
Apparently they are no longer unbreakable, as long as you employ the help of a bear or a troll

It's gotten to the point where people are trying to hack the gameserver to steal the source code and create private servers.