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In League of Legends Summoner's Rift (5v5), there are 3 symmetric lanes.

If only the minions play, does it last forever? Are the lanes fully symmetric?

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No. Random variations in what targets the minions acquire will cause the game to eventually end. For example, if all 3 melee minions on the blue side target the same minion on the purple side, but each minion on the purple side targets a different blue minion, then the blue side will "win" that minion war by having one minion survive while the other side has no minions left. If this happens enough times, repeatedly, eventually minion waves alone will push towers, and ultimately, the nexus.

It can take a long time, but one team or the other will win. Which team wins, however, is random. Neither side has an inherent advantage if left to simulate itself.

This assumes that there are actually champions in the game but they are just idle at the fountain. If no one is in the game, it will simply end. It will not appear in the match history, and it'll be like the game never happened.

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  • Should mention the fact that if there are no players in a game, the game ends. forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=584563
    – Waterseas
    Commented May 15, 2014 at 18:31
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    Someone should do an experiment on this and find out the percentages based on blue and purple sides.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Commented May 15, 2014 at 18:40
  • @ChaseC There are disctinct advantages based on side, most notably the camera angle of the game. It is generally agreed upon that blue side has the most advantages, including the important camera angle advantage.
    – Waterseas
    Commented May 15, 2014 at 20:18
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    @Waterseas But when there are no players playing, and it's just minions, the camera doesn't matter.
    – Invader Skoodge
    Commented May 15, 2014 at 20:20
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    @SysDragon Not really. If we assume that advantage is completely random, there is always a chance at every point of maintaining equilibrium. Then there is no logical upper bound to when the game ends. It should be noted though, that given infinite time the likelyhood of maintaining equilibrium indefinitely is infinitesimal; it is non-zero but for all intents and purposes negligible.
    – evilcandybag
    Commented May 19, 2014 at 13:23
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It's possible for minions only to finish an entire game on Summoner's Rift, it's been tried several times and recorded in videos such as this one (where the red team's minions win) or that one (where the blue team's minions win).

Basically, even if both nexus send the same amount of minions at the same time, due to placement, minions focusing or not the same opponent minion and other factors, a team of minions can take the lead and progress towards a tower and kill it. The game will continue like this until one of the inhibitor is destroyed, where at this point it's likely the minion's team which managed to do so will win.

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    42 minutes, didn't even take that long (in that video)
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Mar 7 at 12:08
  • +1, but I’d love to see this answer improved by adding information on whether this is a random effect or if some subtle asymmetry causes one side to win over time in this context. (It may well be that we just don’t know due to sample size, but if nothing else having at least one example of each side winning would be interesting.)
    – KRyan
    Commented Mar 7 at 13:46
  • This was a while ago and my memory isn't 100%, so please take this with a grain of salt, but me and my friends did some experiments with this in 2015. IIRC it was random, but the first team to destroy a tower always lost. The minions would cluster on the enemy side and they would eventually build up a wave big enough to destroy the T1 tower and push through to T2. This was in 2015, so things are probably different now.
    – Omegastick
    Commented Mar 7 at 16:45

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