Perhaps I am a bit late about this but...

What if the lore department kept the league as a prominent feature of the game, but had major events happen outside of the league. What if there was an invasion of the void, or a massive war and you could choose what side you wanted to win by using a summoner icon for a short period of time. The server would then collect all the wins with the summoner icons of that side and adjust the Valoran to whatever won. The system would only be able to track wins however so that trolls hardcore fans of one side of lore wouldn't go nuts and pick the opposing side and intentionally lose games. This could also be a way to give back to the players who aren't toxic and let them have double the effective wins with whatever summoner icon. This would open a load of opportunities and create more stories like how the rune wars brought about our favorite gems in the league, and . TL;DR: Let the players wage war to make new lore and increase the way players can impact the game.