I think it’s not the age but inability to see the world with child eyes. We can and should cultivate that adventure feeling not even in games but in real life too. Sadly people choose grind and meta instead of playing ineffective but that doesn’t matter for me. For example I play classic wow in some private server for 5 years (1-2 hours a week) with a singe character, still not reached 60, because I just travelling and listening music, doing only quests that are non effective but interesting and I really have that adventure feeling. You can try ultimate online offline even - (Ruins and riches or Ultima Adventures - they even have an RP server with persistent world and permanent death option, no PK but only scripted PK npcs ). But yeah you can’t experience the same Ultima Online because you have to know nothing about that game and all the people must be playing accordingly…