As someone else said, a private server might be more your thing. The tricky part is you’ll need to do some google searching for this. But there is a large number of PVP private servers that do limit the offline raiding aspect of the game, requiring a declaration in order to raid someone and proof that they are online usually through their discord server.
One thing I would say, and this is good advice for anyone reading, is don’t get so attached to a character. Anything you build can be rebuilt pretty easily. Things are easy to replace. And even having to level a new character isn’t that bad. Of course getting robbed blind everytime you logoff is like being on a treadmill slapping you in the groin the entire time and that’s understandable.
But what I mean is don’t be afraid to try different servers. You mind find you like playing vanilla settings one day, and may want to do modded another day. When you find you’re not attached to a single character, you can handle playing the game a multitude of ways. And if you play on a server that wipes periodically you see it as an opportunity to play something new, rather than see it as hours down the drain.
I’ve personally leveled 1-60 (and 1-120, and higher in some cases due to mods) probably about twenty to thirty times. Starting over hasn’t bothered me and I’ve played on about a dozen servers (none of them official though, I can’t go more than 5 minutes, they’re just to laggy and rubber bandy for me).
The game is at its most fun when you’re with a group of buddies. Either RL friends, some online friends, or just random dudes you join on a server. Sometimes you can just join a server, say in global that you’re looking for a clan, and someone might just take you in.
If RP isn’t something you’re above doing, you could even try one of the many RP servers. RPers make a good chunk of the CE community. Whats great about that is you have goals and achievements you could seek out that are intangible that you may not have every sought to do before.
You don’t have to be a full on D&D player or of the like. Most RP servers, especially those with a PVP bent, will take lite-RPers, where you have a focus for your character in your head, and you kinda speak like them, but overall you’re still playing the game.