Celebrating Freedom and Capitalism

Happy July 4th! Two days ago, my Practice Court partner and I reached the culmination of about six weeks worth of work: Big Trial. Sadly, we lost, but the jurors and (more importantly) professors said that both sides put on a good case. We're just glad to be done. Now all that's left is studying for finals and for the bar exam. Oh, and job hunting.

Based on the feedback I've gotten so far, here's the Deluxe plan:

Everyone who has donated will automatically get a Deluxe account, and as new people donate through PayPal they will also automatically get an account. There will be a simple process to register for an account without donating. This will require giving your email address - all accounts will be tied to an email address, but you'll be able to change this email to another at any time.

Each account will be of one of three kinds: "lifetime", "yearly", or "per-game". The account will track your donations, the number of Deluxe games remaining, and the anniversary date for yearly accounts.

• New accounts are "per-game", and get 50 free Deluxe games.
• Every dollar you donate adds 100 Deluxe games to your account.
• You can convert 2400 games into a full year of Deluxe play.
• You get a "lifetime" account once you've donated at least $100.
• Whenever I add a major new Deluxe feature, I will give every account that has fewer than 50 games left enough games to bring them up to 50, so that everyone can try out the new feature.

Example:

• You donated $20: you begin with 2000 (+50 free) games.
• You play 25 Deluxe games, leaving you with 2025 remaining.
• You decide you want to go yearly.
• So you donate $4, bringing your total to 2425 games.
• You convert 2400 games into a year of play.
• When the year is up, you still have 25 games on account.
• You choose to donate another $80.
• Your account immediately becomes a lifetime account, because you have now donated a total of $104.

Yearly and lifetime accounts are always in "Deluxe mode". Per-game accounts can turn Deluxe mode" on and off. Playing with Deluxe mode" turned off doesn't reduce your number of games left, and neither does "watching" - keeping the game open without typing in any guesses. So you can sit and watch other people play, or look at your statistics, or adjust your Deluxe preferences, or just wander away and leave the game running, all without affecting your total games remaining. But as soon as you guess a word during a game with "Deluxe mode" on, that game counts.

And just to make this completely clear: everyone will see the same game board. Free players will see both other free players and Deluxe-mode players in the score list, and Deluxe-mode players will see both free players and other Deluxe-mode players in their score list (unless they use a Deluxe feature to "ban" players or to play a private game).