Groups
The eight teams are divided into two groups, wherein there will be a best-of-one round robin. The top two teams per group will advance to the playoffs. The group stage will be finished within the first day.
The second day will be consumed by the double-elimination playoffs. It will start with a best-of-three crossover series. All games on the upper-bracket will be best-of-three, while all the games on the lower-bracket will be one-game matches.
The champions will earn themselves $5,000. The runner-up and the third-place team will receive $3,000 and $2,000 respectively.
Qualified teams
Participating Philippine teams qualified through the recent Pinoy Gaming Festival's Dota 2 tournament, which was also the last leg of the GMPGL PH. There were four slots up for grabs for the local teams, thus all teams who won their first round match on that eight-team tournament advanced to the GMPGL SEA Finals.
Last year's prominent local Dota 2 team MSI-evoGT lost out, as did Pacific, CnS.Speratus and Pagibig. The champion of that qualifier is yet to be crowned as the final between Mineski and GNE.Dreamz still has not taken place, and is scheduled to kick-off the GMPGL SEA Finals this coming Saturday.
The visiting teams had to work hard for their slots. The original plan was to have local GMPGL top finishers of the participating countries join the LAN finals on the Philippines. However, it was scrapped last month and instead, a qualifier was held. Joining the qualifiers were the leading local teams, as well as a number of wildcard slots. The top finishers, instead of receiving an outright slot, received qualifier seeds instead.
Titan eventually overcame a shaky start and won the qualifiers from the lower bracket. However, the next three finishers were also selected to move on since four slots were being contested on this qualfier. Missing out on the Finals were prominent GMPGL names like 1stVN (Vietnam), MiTH.Trust (Thailand), MUFC (Malaysia) and G7 (Myanmar), among others.
Singaporean Roster Issues
Both Singaporean teams experienced problems with their rosters. Impervious will have to play with three stand-ins, with two of their players not being able to go due to National Service and the other one for personal reasons. First Departure, on the other hand, was caught blindsided by the sudden transfer of Meracle to China's RisingStars and the last-minute schedule conflict of Poloson. Losing their main carry and mid player on such short notice had them scrambling for replacement.
Despite the rather early notice of Team Impervious' roster issues, they still ended up having curious, to say the least, replacements. It's not as if they chose bad players, it is because they chose stand-ins coming from three different countries. Joining the team for the GMPGL SEA Finals are bone (from Malaysia's MAS), Sel (previously from Philippines' Pacific) and drakan (from Singapore's Harrosh).
First Departure was able to secure their replacements literally the night before they head out to the Philippines. They will be joined by a relatively unknown Filipino named Shurei, who is a long time friend of the team. The final member is Flutterby, who played for Singapore's Armaggeddon.Faze before. Had he not been available, First Departure's manager Bryan would be playing as the replacement.
The two other visiting teams had roster issues themselves. Ex-Zenith Ice has just joined Titan as a replacement for the latter's superstar Mushi, who in turn moved with Singaporean and fellow Southeast-Asian iceiceice to China's team DK. Joenet will have a Singaporean player in their lineup in Tudi, and he will be joined by the mainstays NFR, Lavida, Kyosh and Resonance of Fate. While Joenet has experienced a number of roster changes over the past months, this is the team that they feel has contributed the most on their GMPGL journey.
Venue and Tickets
The GMPGL Finals will be held in the Philippines, as the tournament concept originated from the Gigabyte-supported league of Mineski. The venue will be in SM North Edsa, the third largest shopping mall in the whole world.
The games will be played on two different venues within the mall. The general playing area will be on the Cyberzone, while the stage matches will be played in the Skydome. While the games on Cyberzone will be shown over a big screen for free, the stage matches will be having paid tickets due to its very limited sitting capacity.
1,000 non-VIP tickets will be sold per game for the stage matches for PHP 20 (.47~ USD), which means fans can choose which match they are interested in seeing. There will also be 60 VIP tickets to be sold per day, which cost PHP 1,000 (23.25~ USD). The VIP tickets allow a more unique and pleasurable viewing experience; front-row seats, free Starbucks drinks and a GMPGL Finals shirt and a 'personal butler'. What exactly the butler will be able to provide is still unknown.
Online Spectators
As the tournament will be played via the Local Play feature, there will be no DotaTV access for the games. However, there will be a dual-stream set up not only for the live viewers but also for the online fans.
There will be a Filipino cast by Lon and TryQ on Mineski's channel, as well as an English stream on BeyondTheSummit, courtesy of international guests and casters in David 'GoDz' Parker and Litt-Binn 'Winter' Chan.
GosuGamers is coming to Philippines
Specifically, Eric 'ReiNNNN' Khor will be flying to Manila for the event. He will be joined by our local editor Ren 'Pacific.Ren' Vitug at the event to provide you with photos, live coverage and travel blogs. Unfortunately, we were made aware that we may not have the best internet connection in the Philippines and therefore will not be doing video content, since we would not be able to upload it.
Make sure to come say hi and take some pictures with us if you spot us on the gaming floor. ReiNNNN will be flying out tomorrow (November 7) and will blog about his first visit to Pinoyland as soon as he is connected.
The $10,000 prize pool is by far the biggest purse to be competed for in a Dota 2 tournament held in the Philippines. Coming a distant second is the PGF Summer Assembly held last May, which was won by NeoES.Orange (of which four of its five members are now playing for Titan) and had a prize pool of $1,850.
Aside from the Dota 2 tournament, the GMPGL SEA Grand Finals also features a Warcraft III DotA tournament with a similar format and prize pool.
Source: Mineski
