People have been complaining about the high price of runes and rune pages since Season 1. You know how things were before the Runes Reforged of Season 7? Every rune cost IP (Influence Points, now renamed to Blue Essence). They only gave your champion raw stats but because you couldn't change them in match lobbies, you had to buy an individual rune page (at DOUBLE THEIR CURRENT PRICE) for each individual champion and situation you may come across.
I bought a 7 rune page bundle right before they announced the Runes Reforged system, like literally days before we knew about the changes. And as soon as we learned of the changes, I regretted buying them. I already had 3 rune pages before that, and you're telling me that now I can customize them in the pre-game lobby AND there are fewer options that I need to go through, meaning that I don't particularly have to care about having more than 1?! Seriously?! This was a big deal back then!
I keep 5 rune pages set up. I only use half of what I own and haven't bought any more since because I have no need for them. On my PBE account, I started with 3 and that's what I still have to this day, and I never use more than 1 because I just change that 1 in every pre-game.
Oh, and I briefly mentioned that you had to buy runes themselves before. Well, how's them costing 200 IP each, AT MINIMUM, AND that was after they lowered the price and then CUT THE PRICE IN HALF. There were 4 types of Runes: Marks, Glyphs, Seals, and Quintessences. Marks, Glyphs, and Seals all did different stats better and you could have up to 9 of each, while the Quints costed nearly to over 2000 each, once again, after price reductions and even cutting them clean in half.
Oh, and this was in a time where, while you got IP for every game, it was typically about 50 IP per game if you were lucky. Nowadays, I get a level up every about 6 games, so about once a day. Each level up gives me 980 BE. That is a MASSIVE increase in the amount you get. You also get a ton of bonuses for being a new player just starting out. Back before Riot started reworking the new player experience for the better, you had to buy each individual champion. If they were on free rotation, great, you got to play them for about the next week. And if we wanna go way back in time to the first 2 seasons, Riot was releasing a new one every patch. My brother started playing early enough to get caught up to the release schedule and then start grinding out enough games in every 2 weeks to buy the new champion on day of release for 6300. I, on the other hand, played 1 game per day before going to play ROBLOX for the rest of my evening for at least my first 4 years of playing League. I wouldn't own every champion until Riot gave everyone that played back then refunds on every rune we've ever bought, putting me at a solid 150k BE from 0, which I spent to buy the like 5 champions I was still missing at that point and have kept up with release schedules since.
I bought the Warwick Essence Emporium skin for 150k BE and still had 10k left over. And I don't even use it that much, I like grey better, it's just because I'm a skin completionist with my favorite champions. The only one I'm missing at this point is the original Urf Warwick skin.