I would definitely play an MMO which let me script and didn't require my realtime involvement. EVE Online is like that for some of the gameplay already, but something where everything is through "agents" would be even better.
You could open source it and just expect someone to pick it up and host it somewhere for others to play on. The advantage is the host could make modifications to the game mechanics itself (just like any other game).
The alternative would be to develop the server with the 'cloud' in mind. Meaning, there would most likely only be one large game server that perhaps managed 'instances' of matches. The advantage here is that you avoid fragmenting an already small pool of players.