Solo Q is not coming back - Here is why

It makes no business sense.

Riot as a business is interested in two things, growing top line revenue and growing profit. These are fundamental to being a successful business. You then have to ask, how does Riot best achieve this?

Answer: Attract and retain new players. The new changes we are seeing are designed to attract and new and retain mid term players, rather than old school players for the simple reason that new and mid term players spend more money on the game than old timers. There players buy champions, IP Boosts, XP boosts, skins, rune pages, etc. The long time players have enough IP for any new champion and don't need any of the other frills besides a new skin here and there.

Simply put, in order for the game to survive they need to recruit and keep new players. By evolving the game into a social media platform, they feel they can keep and retain new players. Let's look at the changes designed for this player base.

1. Making it easier to level to 30. Makes people achieve goals faster and keep the excitement of leveling up real.
2. Launch of social media clubs to promote communication with your network
3. Dynamic Q. Encourages to play more games within your network, which is fundamental to retention if you are coming from other games, like WOW, where the main reason to keep playing wasn't the game content, it was playing with your guild mates. New people don't want to be stuck on an island in the 'jungle' of solo Q ranked, they want to rank up and play with people in their network. Since Dyn Q, my son has recruited multiple friends from school to play, they are all nearing 30 and they want to play ranked together. Without this, I'm sure they would not be playing the game to level 30 and staying with it. These kids spend money on the game.
4. Dynamic Q and the reduction of the time to 30 means people will rank up faster. The mid term player, who is Bronze/Silver and playing for 1-2 years will automatically rank up with more new people entering the game. This drives excitement and retention. They will further rank up as the old timers who want solo Q stop playing, because there will be less Dia/Plat players who want the old SoloQ. There will be a double whammy of rank inflation, good people quitting and new people entering. Add this to advantages of grouping now and you get a triple whammy. People are moving up and and they move up, they will stay longer.
5. Loot rewards for winning games and playing as grouped is better for getting loot. People like loot and new players don't have all the champs and skins that we all have, so this keeps people with the hunger to keep playing.

Why else won't they implement solo Q Having 2 ranked Q systems would increase the Q times for both groups and result in frustrations for everyone.

The fact is that long time solo Q grognards are not the player base they want to please and retain. They want to please the people who bring in new revenue, which are the social gamers and new comers. The grognards are money losers to Riot and I beleive they don't care if you quit, because in general you don't pay anything, or much of anything, to play the game anymore. If this was a subscription game it would be otherwise, but since it is not you are not really a concern to them.

Maybe I am wrong, but can you think of a business reason why Solo Q makes sense now?

Just my .02.