The game is far from being dead. Steam stats prove there are as many players as last year. Maybe more after the free weekend? (I haven't checked). Right now according to Steam stats, there are as many players on Warband than on DayZ or Europa Universalis IV. Before the free weekend, most players were on NW, now we have a majority on Native. Native players are clearly a reserve for NW. So the game is not dead and it won't die before Bannerlord. I'm not even sure that Bannerlord could kill it as many players will keep playing Warband because of performance issues.
But I'm sure that Harvain is happy that his server is (almost) dead. If I remember correctly he said that he was waiting impatiently for that day?