seems like there's conflicting goals - some people are out to compete and draw blood and others are hoping to relive some nostalgia for a game they last played 15 years ago.
maybe there should still be a competitive tournament where the goal is to win, but find a different way to include all the newcomers. i feel like organized LT play isn't the most fun thing anyway if you can't even ski yet. if i go back to playing dota which i haven't touched in 10 years i wouldn't want to immediately be thrown into organized games with drafting and warding.
what about just hosting a bunch of servers like an open playground and have pubs running all day on all kinds of nostalgic maps and maybe goofy server-side scripts to make things light and fun? players can hop back and forth between the servers if they wanna play a big 20 man LT pub or a 30 man base game - and have these servers open to everyone and we can all play together and just have a good time.