I love the concept of it, at least the micro MMO aspect, but those types of wait games I definitely bounce off of myself. I totally agree a game jam is a hard time to do that for various reasons. I do think that having a faster paced version of it for the jam might have helped, I know that kind of kills the purpose of the game but game jams have narrow windows to hook people.
I've been toying with the idea of setting up a tiny persistent little micro MMO for a game jam but you know more traditional gameplay of just wandering around killing monsters and I've seen some others who have done some cool ones in game jams, but it's exactly as you described, almost nobody else ever sees anyone else in the world. I will still probably do it at some point, but it's a weird fit for sure.