What's Modern?

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I've been moving around the modern servers for almost 2 years now. I've been almost always, whenever I've talked about one of the modern servers I've worked on, been described as an Era/AnyOtherModernServerName clone. I recently started thinking about what modern servers have been doing wrong. So, I want to ask the general public: What would take for a new modern server not to be considered a clone of some previous modern server? From my experience with Noctorious, people seem to like the basic era remake ._. I wanted to have a strong and important economic system in Noctorious but, this was quickly dumped as players didn't really like the idea and would usually go with something along the lines of "why don't you do this like Era's <something>?". Are this people what a friend of mine once defined as an "era reject looking for a new era where he can be something" or is this a more general opinion of what people consider an ideal modern server? Is era already perfect and thus, any other modern server will automatically be disposed of? Opinions will allow current and future modern servers to improve.

My opinion about the matter is that, no one really knows what they want. As what we have defined as "modern" is basically based around Era. It can be frustrating to fight against the fact that you will most likely, be compared with Era anytime you mention anything about a modern server. I can't really think of a way to move forward and create something based upon this idea of what modern is. Does it mean that era should be the only modern server? I really think that the staff team at Noctorious actually achieved something even though, it was never completed as originally intended. I think that at least the server was made with a very high quality standard having a general look and feel that was overall way better than many other modern servers.

So what do you think? I apologize if it seems a little messy ._. since, I just wrote it as it came out of my mind.