League of Legends - Too Grindy?

This is not a complaint, per se, but an observation and question.

It takes ~40,000 xp to gain level 30 (about 15,000 to get level 20). There are two ways to play. You can do "rigged" games vs. the computer (rigged in the sense you you set it up so that you have a champion you know and are comfortable with and a good match up against an opponent of your choice). This will allow you to get about 95xp per 20 minutes on Twisted Treeline. But that trick only works until level 15 (8676 xp) which is about 90 games over 30 hours. For the next 31,400 xp, you have to do it the grindy way. That means playing 3v3 games and earning 110ish for a win and 65ish for a loss and games taking about 30 minutes. Assuming you get roughly equal of these (I've been getting consistent wins with fiddle/yorick and consistent 50/50 when I experiment with others), you're looking at a gain of about 90 xp per 30 minutes.

So that's 348 games to get to lvl 30 and about 170 hours. If you play 3 hours a night (a lot), 7 days a week, you get there in about two solid months of playing.

Why are these important? Because the level is a hard cap on your rune slots and mastery points. In fact, until 20, you can't buy the "good" runes at all (there are three tiers of runes and the top tier is available at 20). So no matter how well you play, you're always at a disadvantage against a random opponent until you get to at least 20 and really until you get to 30. This is why solo ranked queue isn't available until lvl 20.

Fortunately, you do hit lvl 20 with reasonable swiftness (probably 12-13 days of heavy play).

And, of course, all that assumes you go with optimal play (grinding 3v3s instantly with your best characters). If you stop to do something "fun" you take time off of that schedule.

Here's the question though, since the community is relatively mature, is that totally fair to new entrants? Everquest quickly got to a point where, after only a couple years, the number of new players was anemic because it was very difficult to get into the game. There were so few new players that you had to either solo or play with twinked out alts. If you played with the twinks, you leveled a bit faster but you were a boat anchor for them (and thus they were unlikely to accomodate you). If you soloed... well... soloing in EQ was no fun.

In LoL, there's no real way to "Power Level" your character. You can purchase double xp time. The best buy is probably the 7 day for 520 (there's a 10 win for 350 which isn't bad for Summoner's Rift players but kind of sucks for TT players). Assuming you play two hours per night and get 4 games in, the 7 day one is good for an extra 2,450 xp over a week (4.7 xp / riot point). The per win bonus would be 1980 xp if you played Summoner's Rift exlusively (about 5.6 / riot point). However, the 7 day one looks a lot better if you play the game heavily during that time.

So, I'm still left with the notion that the game feels a bit "grindy" to me given everything. I wouldn't necessarily have minded if they made me grind up individual characters a little bit more and my summoner a little bit less. I think that would be fair. But the simple grind to 30 the way it is now feels a little bit like a return to EQ in some ways...

Still gonna play, just some thoughts.