I guess you're misunderstanding the intention of the developers. If they are truly just wanting to make a huge profit out of a brainless game pattern then they won't go with this design. Those "repetitive attention" games inevitably make you feel empty and waste your time in the end, and shouldn't be any self-respecting programmer's dedication. That's why there should be alternatives.
I'd argue that all 'games' are about manipulating attention - its just a question of what means they use to do so. Game design is really a sort of meta-game about designing systems that effect the behavior of players. Consider: Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdfU2DoF8o )
I'm fully with you on the notion that we shouldn't be manipulating players life like farmville. Johnathan blow put on a great talk about games and the human condition where he covers this aspect quite scathingly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU
To completely ignore this aspect is to develop a game with no real-stickyness factor. Money aside, don't you want a game that people enjoy playing? The entire point of an MMO is to have a large reoccurring user-base. There is an art to it, and getting it right can make really powerful games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY
For board games like chess, much of the appeal for the average player is that you get to sit down with a friend and compete, and in doing so the 'intellectual nature' of the game ends up pulling them in for the long term. Perhaps the answer to the meta-game of stickiness is to create a community around the game in a similar vein to the one from the ants ai challenge's forums.
Were I to work on this project, I'd make a strong push toward git-like integration ala the work done behind KhanAcademy's live editor like discussed in this talk: http://ejohn.org/blog/talk-khan-academy-computer-science/. - being able to share code behaviors with your team-mates (you are going to implement a guilds system, no?) and encourage discussions about behaviors at large would really help spurn the creation of a community.
To that end, have you considered creating more of a PvE aspect to things? Needing to conquer your local enemy denizens before finding other players would be an awesome way to encourage teamwork and camaraderie. Like in EVE, to be able to mine in the more mineral rich areas, you'd need to have more than one player's worth of resources and expertise.
This is the actually the direction I'm taking for my Ant game - in this case the various phenotype are actually things you unlock by conquering more advanced AI tribes. (Similar to the mechanic behind the demo of terratech)
