After a successful ROG Masters 2016 tournament, ASUS yesterday unveiled the ROG Masters 2017 – Indian and South Asia qualifiers.
Last year, India merely belonged to the “Rest of Asia” region, which it shared with Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Looking at the sheer response on Indian soil, India has graduated now to the APAC (Asia Pacific) region in the format of the tournament.
For those who are not aware of what ROG Masters is, worry not. ROG Masters is an international e-sports tournament organised by ASUS’s gaming brand “Republic of Gamers.” The tournament hosts competitions around the world for Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2. Micro tournaments for the respective games are held across the world, as per the regions (China, EMEA, America, APAC). The winners of each region then make it to the Grand Finale event of ROG Masters. ASUS is offering a cash prize of a total of $500,000 to the winners of the tournament. Winners of the regional finales will also take home some cash prize.
ROG Masters 2017 – South Asia
For the first time, apart from hosting Online Qualifiers, ASUS will also be organising offline qualifiers at 16 cyber cafes across 8 cities in India between July 8 – 25. The eight chosen cities are Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Delhi. The full list of cyber cafes participating will be shared in a separate post. Post the offline qualifiers, Online Qualifiers will commence from July 27 onwards. The winners of both the qualifiers will then take part in the South-Asia finale in Bengaluru on August 19-20. The prize pool for the South-Asia finale is a whopping INR 10,00,000.
In the South Asia finale, a total of 4 teams from India, 1 team from Bangladesh and 1 team from Sri Lanka will go head to head in order to fight for the South Asia glory and the cash prize.
The winner of the South-Asia finale will get to compete at the ROG Masters Grand Finale in November 2017. One India team will have a total of three chances to qualify and advance to the Asia Pacific finals: Offline Qualifier + Online Qualifier + APAC open Online Qualifier.
Here is the full ROG Masters 2017 format:
At the annoucement event in Delhi, Peter Chang, Regional Head and Country Manager said:
Our endeavor has always been to provide the latest innovative hardware to the gamers worldwide and last year, we officially entered the world of Esports with the first ever ROG Masters. It witnessed astounding success and this year we go global across 30 countries across five continents. This is an opportunity for all the gamers in India to showcase their prowess and be a part of one of the largest global Esports phenomenon. We are excited to be one of the driving pillars for Esports and Gaming in India.
Esports is picking up in India, and with the initiative of big players like ASUS, there isn’t going to be anything that stops this from propelling. We for one, cannot wait for the ROG Masters tournament to pick up. We expect a big response, and iLL extends its support to the Indian teams to make it to the ROG Master Grand Finale event in November.
Stay tuned for more ROG Masters 2017 updates.
