Monday, September 17, 2007

[LAUNCH] The first post: 15 September, One Esplanade - event prep

The first in a series of posts documenting the Granado Espada launch events in the Philippines, taking place over the weekend of 15-16 September 2007.

Featuring smaller pictures for easier reading and navigation.

Next posts:
Press Luncheon and Upcoming Patches
Liberty's Wrath Finals
GE at e-Games Evolution
NineMoons's Shout-Outs


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That's the sign on the wall of the building known as One Esplanade, the venue for the 15 September Commercial Launch Party of Granado Espada in the Philippines.

I was at the venue by 8am, the better to fall in line for the Divine Angel Wings that were to be given out to the first 100 registrants; and also to document the preparations being made for the Day Raid and Night Raid.

The first thing that caught my eyes at the venue were five full-size, beautiful standees depicting the five stock character classes of GE:

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The male musketeer and his rifle.

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The male fighter and his rapier.

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The female wizard and her escort the male fighter.

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The female scout and her potion at the ready.

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The female fire elementalist. [Pay special attention to this standee; you might see it again soon.]

The event registration was supposed to begin at 2pm, but as early as 8:30am there were already a few people hanging around and watching the event staff and e-Games people set up.

As I understood it later, the Day Event was to take place outside, on the roofed pavilion; while the Night Raid was to be inside One Esplanade itself, which throughout the day was being set up for a first-class dance party.

Crowd pictures:

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That's Welling in the red jacket and shades, surrounded by friends from PasawayProphecy faction from Caravaggio server.

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A few members of Pinoy-AllStars faction from Pachelbel server. That banner shows their support and pride for their faction, which sent a team to the National Finals.

Also early at the venue were the cosplay marshals sent by Cosplay.ph, and with them came this cute little girl, cosplaying none other than Catherine the Summoner!

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Look at those dolls! A Helena and a Sasha in this picture, as well as a Lloyd that followed later!

Applause from the appreciative crowd followed the successive appearances of the next GE-related cosplayers:

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Two of the models in scout costumes.

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A girl in a fire elementalist robe, next to the elementalist standee. She carried three sets of bracelets on her wrists: red, for fire; blue, for ice; and bronze, for lightning.

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My and DeSanggria's friend Ligaya, cosplaying Brunie Etienne.

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And the e-Games personnel were not to be outdone - here are DeSanggria herself as Idge Imbrulia [note the sword!], and pCM Veya as Emilia the Sage!

Idge/DeSanggria and Brunie/Ligaya were kind enough to let me borrow their weapons for pictures:

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Me and Idge's greatsword.

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Me and Brunie's twin pistols.

Preparations ran on until around 4pm, even with the crowd of players already milling around the venue.

***

Next post: my detour to the Mall of Asia for the special press luncheon, along with pictures of the special guests~!

To view all the pictures from the event, please click on this Photobucket album: Granado Espada launches.

2 comments:

Bea said...

you should've cosplayed as well =P

PJ Punla said...

@ veya

thinking of saving up for a female fighter costume....