"we’ll listen and apply what we learn to ARURF’s next appearance."

So, does this mean URF in it's glory is dead forever? We're only ever going to see the ARURF versions from now on?

It seems fairly obvious to me why people appear to stop playing league entirely after URF... they binge so heavily that they put so much off in life that they need to get back to it. Once they get back to life, some may return after a hiatus, while others may realize they don't need league in their life.

You want to know something though? What's the main difference between EVERY iteration of URF ever, and pretty much any other RGM?

URF has always been like a 2 week thing. Other RGMs (with the exception of Poro King which is largely a remake of ARAM and probably doesn't draw the same playerbase) are only up for a weekend.

Try throwing URF (and please, URF, not ARURF) up for a weekend at a time and see what happens. And throw it up regularly (not once per year) so people don't get all upset that they wait so long for it, only for it to be so brief.

It feels like everything you guys do to this game mode makes it destined to fail. "RGMs lose popularity fast" - let's keep URF open for 2+ weeks so the numbers have plenty of time to fall and we can say it's not popular.

"URF had an unhealthy meta so we replaced it with ARURF" - let's ignore all the complaints that it's no better and becomes a "who got the better team assignment". At least in URF you could choose to play who you wanted and have fun even if the other team was stronger, or you could choose to play something strong to compete.

"League loses players after URF is out" - let's make URF worse each time to make it really clear to the players that the game as a whole is deteriorating (even if the game actually isn't) so they walk out.

Is it so hard to do the simplest change first? Regular old URF, for a weekend instead of 2 weeks. See how it plays out. Does a weekend cause you to lose players? If it does, okay - then try something else. See if the obvious thing fixes your problem first though. Show you actually listen to the playerbase and give them what they want. How do you even know the majority didn't like the meta of regular URF and it wasn't just a vocal minority? And no one is here saying ARURF needs to go away too - just mix everything together. Let the players have what they want every so often. ARURF one weekend every 3 months or so. URF one weekend every 3 months or so. Try it a couple times and see what happens.