That's because Limewire is a client and not a server. If you wanted decent share ratios you needed to update your firewall to allow the correct inbound ports (or leave UPnP on (bad idea)).

A self-hosted server is an entirely different beast. You're right, it's not easy to setup and run -- but that's the world we live in. Malicious actors have ruined something that could have been relatively easy and automated to setup and run; even the most experienced of us wouldn't stand against professional penetration testers or nation states.