A few observations and opinions.
Message:1) The "average" is often a nebulous/dubious concept. While not RPG related is is simultaneously true that the "average" SAG actor makes $100,000 a year, AND that 90% of dues paying SAG actors will never make a year's worth of "living wage" across their entire career.
2) Keeping people together for a campaign is just hard. Our Wed games started in November, 2017. Through that time the five mostly-consistent players are Red, Rusty, Conrad, Tony and me. Rusty, Conrad and Tony miss occasional sessions for work. I've missed several by being out of the country. Laura, Bruce, Greg M, Dennis, Fred, Natasha and Ovy have all been in and out. I feel I'm forgetting someone. Point being, it's just hard to get people to gather consistently.
3) If you lose your Ref, your Ref loses their notes or the Ref decides they don't know where to take the campaign next your campaign ends real fast. A campaign can continue for years with players missing sessions every week, but there's only one Ref.
3a) Multi Ref events exist, are few and far between, usually one offs, else are actually multiple campaigns in a shared world.
4) As Red said, some people prefer short campaigns with a beginning/middle/end, rather than an open ended sprawl. Keeps the storyline from petering out for no true reason.
7) (mixing 3 and 4) speaking of petering out, there's really so many ways to continue the currently paused Cutlass campaign, I don't actually wanna reboot. We have a PC Emperor of the Indus, we have a Swashbuckler who has built a huge network of hotels - and spies! We have a PC who THINKS he is a powerful intermediary between a powerful cartel and Emperor Tony, and the PC's just assassinated the Marshal of England, but captured a long - standing Rival and are attempting to blame him for the attack to prevent the English from declaring war on France and/or the Indus. So much story potential there to either take the PCs down a few pegs, or to build a new Empire...
Yours,
IronMike
07-Oct-2021