We Watched ESL One Manila 2016 Live

We watched the ESL One Manila 2016 live at Mall of Asia Arena. This is our first time to the place and also our first live event. We're supposed to watch this event on Saturday and Sunday (April 23 to 24), but our ticket is just for Sunday (finals)... odd. ESL One Manila 2016 held the DOTA 2 tournament. I've been watching a lot of these kinds of e-sports games on livestream.

Sorry for the far-shot photos, you'll know why.

We only paid for general admission (the cheapest ticket). The view is almost good even if we're seated on the highest row of seats but the railings for the lights ruined it by blocking the top part of the huge screen, obstructing the view especially when viewing the character line-up for the team that's placed on top. And yeah when the game is on intermission, we can't see the faces of the commentators on the screen, it's like they're censored by the railings.

We watched day 2 of the event live and the match line-up is Fnatic vs. Wings and Liquid vs. Empire. Fnatic lost the match against Wings which we haven't seen because we came late. Team Liquid won the match against Empire that defeated Team Secret on the first day.

Maelk's Macho Man Look.
...and look at the "railing" blocking the view!

The intermissions are entertaining. We LOL-ed at the Macho Man Look contest. Maelk and Toby have the best look but Toby ultimately won the contest, but they're gonna have a Macho Man remach on Frankfurt, Germany!

Hey, hey, it's Alodia Gosiengfiao as Windranger!

The event also have a cosplay competition. To my surprise these cosplayers have the best costumes. Kudos to the cosplayers for their effort! The costumes we're cheap-looking on the last cosplay competition I went to around 10 years ago (yeah that long).

The Templar Assassin twins. They both look nice

Terrorblade, very nice looking costume.
It's like his chest is glowing.

Dragon Knight the best cosplay in the event.
His costume have glowing red eyes

There are lot of Windranger cosplayers in the competition (even the judge, Alodia Gosiengfiao cosplayed it on this event) but we liked the Terrorblade, Razor, Tiny and Dragon Knight cosplayers, they look awesome. Dragon Knight won, second runner up Terror Blade and the third are the Templar Assassin twins.

As usual, this kind of event have a raffle where the prizes are some PC hardware and peripheral stuff. I really want that GTX 970, the Logitech Keyboard and the Steel Series headphones.

The Queen of Pain with some guy with the face I blurred.

Drow's nice enough to pose for me, but QoP's wings is a photobomber!

There are booths and stalls outside the arena. Man those ESL merchandise are expensive, We want that ESL hoodie! Note to self: bring  more cash to these events.

The Logitech gaming peripherals caught my eye because of their design and cool looks. It makes me want to go 100% on setting up a PC than buying a gaming laptop.

The Main Event! Team Liquid vs. Wings!

Lastly, Liquid and Wings battled each other in the finals. I rooted for Liquid while she's allied herself with Wings for fun rivalry and suspense. The match is epic and we're glad we watched it live. This beats all the e-sports MOBA livestreams that I watched in the past. Wings mowed down Team Liquid with a straight 3-0 run. Liquid almost won the third round but Wing's Alchemist single-handedly bulldozed Liquid's heroes and turned the game around.

Wings, the ESL One Manila 2016 Champs!

Wings, from China, are really good. This is their first time in the competition and they won it. We thought Liquid lost because they we're playing straight to the finals where Wings have more rest time than them... well that's just our speculation. 

We had a great day in the event. Too bad we didn't bring home any souvenirs except for the "cheering balloon", we also want those #1 finger hand too but most people hoarded them, I mean come-on, why get three, four or five of them if you're just one person? Well anyway, Congratulations to Wings for winning ESL One Manila 2016 DOTA 2 tournament!

Cheers!