For three days, the Arena of Stars at Genting Highlands played host to some of the best Dota 2 games as eight teams from around the world – two compromising of Malaysians – battled it out to take home the coveted ESL One trophy while also pocketing a cool $USD125,000. For three grueling days, these eight teams waged war against one another to claim the top spot as well as bragging rights.
The teams include the winners as well as runner-up to The International 6 (Valve’s yearly Dota2 tournament), Wings Gaming and Digital Chaos (DC) respectively; Chinese juggernauts Newbee also took part alongside Virtus Pro (VP) from Russia, Team NP from North America, Execration (XctN) from the Philippines and Malaysia’s very own WarriorsGaming.Unity (WG.U) and Fnatic.
The first day of the tournament already saw an upset for the local favourites as they lost their respective matches and dropped down to the lower bracket while eventual grand finalists DC and Newbee were off to a strong start in their opening matches. DC in particular had a tougher road compared to their opponents as they had a TI6 grand final replay against Wings Gaming. History did not end up repeating itself as DC walked away, winning two games in a best-of-three series. In the end, Newbee from Group and DC from Group B made its way to the semifinals.
Day 2 wasn’t any better as it saw the elimination of the local favourites as well as crowd favourite Team NP (vastly due to its captain, EnternalEnvy) and XctN. This was largely due to their losses against VP and Wings Gaming, which saw them make up the other half of the semifinal bracket. The final day of ESL One Genting saw nail-biting matches between DC and VP as well as an all-Chinese semifinal, Newbee vs Wings Gaming. Although DC did comfortably win the series 2 – 0, Newbee took down Wings Gaming 2 – 1, ensuring there wouldn’t be a repeat of the TI6 grand final.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-e6HuBgfaE]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sYQDjhHzCk]
The grand final was a back-and-forth best-of-five series, which saw Wings Gaming take the lead after a confident and comfortable win against DC. Unfazed, DC came into the second game with guns blazing and after almost an hour in-game time, managed to level the scoring to 1 – 1. Game three saw Newbee pulling ahead once again after some beautiful teamwork and exceptional individual gameplay from the boys from China. Similar to game three, game four saw another game ending just before the half hour mark but this time in DC’s favour as they went for a similar hero composition that worked out for them against VP in day two. This shattered Newbee’s confidence as DC went on to steamroll the Chinese powerhouse in-game five, forcing out the ‘GG’ call from Newbee just after the half hour mark.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiQgBlfx3f4]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojleS8u7iXU]
