It was bad, dude. The new system is a million times better.
You used to just load into a match and have to hash out who goes in what lane using chat.
Everyone whould immediately type "mid" or "top" in the chat and the first to write it would.....often....get to play that role.
Except that people would sometime instalock the champ they wanted and just say they were going mid no matter what. It was not rare to have 3 or 4 people instalock mid champs and then flame eachother until someone hopefully dodged.
Support and jungle were for whoever typed the slowest and so they usually hated the role and didnt know how to play it.
The new system is 1000% better than the bad old days.