From my point of view the introduction of system nodes is a bigger deal than I think people realize for several reasons:
1. It creates a dynamic equilibrium between master nodes and system nodes within the network -- there will be tokens to be made by switching between system nodes and master nodes based on the number of system nodes and master nodes.
2. The system nodes will add capacity to the network to support utility applications -- so what is just an NTP server now could be multiple or other packages.  Could be cool to have a relationship with Discord or others to package their server software to run on system nodes. 
3. The API, which will manage applications, payments and sign-in / sign-out or user registration, such that the blockchain can behave as an openPKI for registered applications will connect the network capacity which is being deployed in all these nodes to applications and economic uses.
4. The economic uses will be around compute, communication and commerce... just like the team has been discussing.  The idea that a system should be general use instead of special purpose is another of those important strategic decisions that the CRW team made early based on the simple observation that general use systems seem to always win at the end of the day.
5. But the most important fact is that the system nodes will allow for a whole lot of more people to get engaged in the community... proposing ideas and playing with the code, and offering improvements.

I do think that there is something amazing being built here -- a platform without an agenda, which will be available for people to put in motion.  The only caveat being that the anonymizing features have been pulled out -- so if someone wants to use it to do something that could get everyone else in trouble, the record of it will be there in the chain -- in the long-term the value proposition is usefulness, not anything else.... as I understand it.

Nice work guys.