I'm actually working on starting a StoryNES at the moment.
I think we do need some kind of, for want of a better word, 'simple' NESes, mostly because they are good at getting passersby to get into NESing. They join, they stick around for a bit, they learn how things work, and they make their own NESes. Capto worked when it was around because it was fairly intuitive to get into - you pick a small out-of-the-way country, you read the bits of the five updates that pertained to you, and you jump in. Thats how I got into NESing, at least. The other thing CI had was longetivity, because it got people to stay.
The other long-running NES, EoE, I feel, doesn't really have the newbie friendliness that CI had. The ordersets/update style/general backgrand doesn't seem that conducive to it. Not that thats a bad thing, of course, because its not, its just maybe we need something to pick up new players.
I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, I'm not really in EoE and maybe I'm just projecting my own fears onto it. Still, I don't think anybody will object to "a NES that is good at getting people into the community". Honestly I'm thinking of running one of my own (partially because I want to run a NES again
), and at some point in the near future I probably will.