Because the host can't participate
Sure they can! I'm not sure why you thought that :)
First, as of this update, rt tournaments will have to start at some specific time or they'll get deleted
That was true before the update, too. It's just that before the update, the time was always "right now". With this update you can specify any time.
Now, I thought that I'd be able to make it for free
The problem is that allowing people to make open tournaments for free doesn't work. We tried it, and the ratio between people who want to make tournaments and the people who want to join tournaments is too heavily weighted towards the making side. This causes way too many tournaments to get created and the entire system breaks down. You can read more about my thoughts on this here:
https://www.warlight.net/Forum/74674-s-talk-open-tournamentsPerhaps there is a way to do some sort of sliding scale, where tournaments are cheap/free when there's only a few in existence, but they get more expensive as the open tournament page grows in size. That would basically be a self-correcting system, instead of requiring us to adjust it manually.
This game is becoming more and more money orientated.
WarLight's servers cost over $1000 per month just to keep running. Every time anyone accesses the site or plays a game, it costs money. That money has to come from somewhere, or the site would cease to exist. I am trying to find a way to make WarLight profitable without making it pay-to-win like most other games are doing. If you have a better suggestion at how to accomplish this, I'd like to hear it!
I understand Fizzer wants to make some cash out of this but taking away the free options is the best way to stop new players from staying.
Tournaments are a bit of an advanced feature. New players can't even access tournaments, as it's a feature that needs to be unlocked. And even if they could, most new players would still start playing a bunch of normal games before moving on to tournaments, so I don't think your point is really accurate.
Edited 3/31/2015 19:33:23