What about 4 days and 20x rate?
Prize: Mask set (for first tournament). If successful maybe a phat set for the next.
About the 500 dollars, i were thinking we save a percentage of the donation money and put aside for this tournament to build a tournament prize. I don't think it's bad to get some real life help for all the effort you put in.
I also had another idea, What if we create a bracket (64 players (invited)). Where we have 1v1 fights till we reach a winner. This could be hosted with decided level every second week by using donated in-game items for this kind of tournament. Tournament level and invited players are announced 1 week before tournament starts so you can build your character.
The bracket can be visual on the website with how it's progressing. (Winner, loser, bracket stages etc). as well as giving the winner a medal of some sort tied to the forum account or a separate table for the tournament winner or maybe not a medal... A Thropy (bronze, silver and gold).
I like 4/5 days of 20/25x, keeping in mind people will have to grind everything in that time.. Herblaw, cooking, fishing, combat, mining, smithing, collect runes.
I understood what the players are saying about the real money; like-wise, much smaller prizes of like 25-50$ and something in-game could still be a huge inventive.
I really like the idea of running tournaments with in-game prizes as well as something for the achievement. Even trophies or a banner that states somewhere how many times that person has won, or even just a banner of current tournament champion.
I can tell you I would be participating in both, but that 1st tournament sounds insanely fun. With a prize such as 50$ and/or in-game prizes, this could very rewarding while having a lot of fun!