Hello GPSty，
Welcome to the Microsoft Community！
I'm morning and it's an honor to provide you with technical support and hope to help you resolve your issue.
According to your description, you seem to have suddenly encountered a situation where you couldn't log in with hotmail.com and were asked to log in with Microsoft, right? This is indeed a very disturbing situation, and I understand how you feel!
The current official documentation shows that Hotmail does require a Microsoft account to log in. learn more.
For hotmail changes, the official documentation shows that although Outlook.com replaced Hotmail a few years ago, Hotmail accounts will continue to be used in the Outlook app. See: Microsoft Outlook (formerly Hotmail): Microsoft Outlook (formerly Hotmail): Free email and calendar | Microsoft 365, click "sign in" to see if this entry can be directly used hotmail.com login
Also, since the documentation shows that it can be used in the "Outlook apps", if you are using the outlook.com web version, you can try installing the Outlook app to see how it goes.
I understand very well that you suddenly encounter a situation where you cannot access your email. If there are other error messages here, please share the content of the message or screenshots with us, which may help you decide the next step.
Finally, I need to explain to you that the community forum is a technical support department, and the development department does not pay attention to the user feedback here in real time. If you are willing to share your constructive ideas with the development department of Microsoft, it will be very meaningful and can help Microsoft product development to better understand and fit the user support experience.
I hope it can help you solve the problem. If there is anything I can help you with, please leave me a message!
Best Regards ,
Morning | Microsoft Technical Support Community
