Let's Talk About Champion IP Costs

Let's talk about how the total IP value of champions alone in this game is 491700 IP. Four hundred ninety-one thousand and seven hundred influence points.

Let's assume that Riot's estimation of 30-45 minute games is accurate, and let's have the average game time be 37.5 minutes. Let's say you earn about 100 IP per win and about 50 IP per loss, factoring in a 250 IP Win of the Day once per day. Let's say you have an average 55% winrate, and that you play an average of 20 hours a week, or 32 games. Let's assume that you get your WotD every single time it's up, "on cooldown", so you get it 7 times a week.

That means out of your 32 games, you win 17.6 and lose 14.4, and 7 of those wins are WotD. That means you get 1060 from wins, 720 from losses, and 1750 from WotD---all totalling up to 3530 IP per week, meaning 176.5 IP per hour.

At this rate, it would take you 2785.84 hours to earn enough IP to buy every champion in the game. No runes, no rune pages. Just champions. Assuming you're sticking to your 20 hours per week plan, that means 139.29 weeks, or 2.67 years. You'd have to play this game every single day for 2.67 years, getting every single win of the day when it's up, and playing 20 hours a week. That's brutal. That's ridiculous.

Thinking realistically, the game times and IP rewards vary much more, but the amount played also varies quite a bit. These average speculations should be somewhat accurate, accounting for both directions of deviation. So think about that.

2 and 2/3 years straight of playing 20 hours every single week.