MANILA, Philippines – Huge, collective cheers and jeers echoed through the chambers of the World Trade Center on Sunday, July 30, as top League of Legends (LoL) players showed their stuff at Rampage 2017. 

Rampage is the biggest annual gathering of the wildly popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), League of Legends. This year’s event anticipated over 13,000 attendees, a number it most likely reached given the extremely long, and thick lines that formed hours before gates opened at 11 am. (READ: IN PHOTOS: All that’s happening at Rampage 2017)

Inside, moving around was difficult as thousands of individuals coalesced into an immovable crowd, especially during the peak hours in the early afternoon. Three massive screens – one on the center stage, and two on the sides – displayed the battles, capturing the crowd’s attention. Whenever the action peaked, the crowd boomed with enthusiastic howling, nearly enough to blow the roof off the makeshift arena.

Drawing some of the loudest cheers: a pair of kids who won the P40,000-cosplay contest with their earnest performance; the “Celebrity Showmatch” featuring online personalities like Sachzna Laparan and Emman Nimedez, gamer Ashley Gosiengfiao, TV personalities Eric “Eruption” Tai, and singer Sam Concepcion; and Team Manila Eagles’ comeback victory against Mineski. 

The lattermost was the finals of the Bacchus Pro Gaming Series 2017 Summer Split, whose winner got P300,000 and a ticket to Garena Premier League Summer 2017, where Southeast Asia’s best battle.

A win there nets a ticket to the granddaddy of LoL events, League of Legends World Championship 2017 – a chance that Team Manila Eagles is surely looking forward to after their “reverse sweep” on Mineski. 

Mineski led 2-0 in the best-of-5, but the Eagles rampaged in the next sets, reeling in 3 straight wins and the series, and coincidentally pushing the event to a much later finish at 10 pm. 

The crowd – still big but now a fraction of what it was earlier in the day – cheered the winners on, while Team Mineski accepted their second-place check (P100,000) clearly dejected over how it panned out. 

Watch the video above for a 2-minute recap of all these LoL happenings! – Rappler.com