Mobile Legends M3 World Championship format, venue announced; Blacklist in Group A, Onic PH in Group B

Moonton, the company that developed the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, has announced the details for the prestigious and highly-anticipated M3 World Championship set to be held later this year.

The international game developer bared that M3 will be staged in Singapore with the Philippines seeking to bag the title for a second consecutive time.

Singapore was the same host country when the Philippines' Bren Esports ruled the Mobile Legends M2 World Championship earlier this year against Myanmar's Burmese Ghouls.

"We've dealt with our share of challenges over the past championship events but this year is a whole different frontier for us," said Michael Lin, Moonton's esports marketing manager, in a virtual press conference on Saturday morning (Manila time).

"We believe that M3 will be different among other events because one, there will be an international presence of the incoming teams to Singapore, and two, the potential to have an in-person audience."

16 teams from around the world will be competing for the USD 800,000 prize pool, the biggest ever in the tournament's history. The grand champion will get the lion's share with USD 300,000.

MPL Philippines defending champions Blacklist International, considered as one of the contenders to go all the way, was grouped with MPL Brazil Season 1 champions Red Canids Kalunga, Latam Championship 2021 champion Malvinas Gaming of Peru and Mobile Legends Turkey Championship 2021 champion Bedel.

Onic Philippines, the country's other representative, was assigned to the "Group of Death" where they will meet MPL Indonesia's defending champion Onic Esports along with MPL Malaysia Season 6 champions Todak and MPL Brazil Season 1 runner-up Vivo Keyd

Composing Group C are EVOS SG (Singapore), SeeYouSoon (Cambodia), Natus Vincere (Russia), and BTK (United States) while SMG (Malaysia), RRQ (Indonesia), GX Squad (Middle East), and RSG SG (Singapore) are stuffed in Group D.

The teams will play in two stages, the group stage and the playoffs. In the group stage, each team plays a best-of-one single round robin, or plays against three other teams within the group once.

There will be no team elimination, however, the top two teams of each group will advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs. The bottom two teams in each group will be at the lower bracket.

Playoffs are spread out in nine days with all upper bracket matches to be played in best-of-five. The lower bracket is best-of-three until round three where it will then be best-of-five. 

The winner of upper bracket and lower bracket finals will meet at the grand finals in a best-of-seven match.

Lin added that the two Philippines' representatives are among the teams to watch out for in the tournament but stressed every team is expected to put up a fight.

"We have no reason to doubt that the Philippines will put on a great performance," Lin said. "However, we should never underestimate the heart of the champions which all the other 15 teams are in their own discipline. We expect nothing short of heated matches in M3."

The group stage is tipped to open on December 6 and will run until December 9.

—with reporting by John Edison Ubaldo/JMB, GMA News