Team Liquid watched its Golden Road bid slip away as the home crowd roared Alter Ego to a crushing 3-2 lower bracket semifinal win in the M7 World Championship on Saturday at the Tennis Indoor Stadium Senayan in Indonesia.

The MPL PH Season 15 and 16 champions were just one win away from advancing to the lower bracket finale after rebounding from a tough Game 1 loss and seizing the next two games, but the Indonesian squad wrested control in Game 4 on the back of a dominant Freya outing from Arifudin "Arfy" Dingarai to force a winner-take-all decider.

Team Liquid went with an early-game lineup featuring Karl “KarlTzy” Nepomuceno on Leomord, Kiel “OHEB” Soriano on Esmeralda, and Sanford “Sanford” Vinuya on Yu Zhong in Game 5, aiming to set the pace and control the map from the opening minutes.

The Filipinos managed to do just that, with KarlTzy leading the early-game onslaught with seven kills and two assists against just one death in the first 12 minutes of the contest.

However, momentum shifted towards Alter Ego when they successfully managed to win multiple Lord fights that allowed them to take the objective and seize control of the match.

With no hero on the opposing side capable of bursting him down or locking him, Arfy on Claude had a free game, constantly dishing out damage against Team Liquid’s melee and tank heroes and keeping them under constant pressure.

From there on, the Indonesian squad maintained relentless control, systematically dismantling Team Liquid’s defenses en route to an 18-14 victory in a hard-fought 20-minute clash to secure a spot in the top three.

Coming off a rousing win over Aurora Gaming in the lower bracket quarterfinals, Team Liquid stumbled out of the gates against Alter Ego, absorbing a lopsided 28-12 defeat in the 15-minute Game 1 loss.

But the Filipinos leaned on their comfort picks in the second match, with Sanford on Yu Zhong and KarlTzy piloting Fredrinn. 

The former wreaked havoc on the backlines, repeatedly disrupting the Yi Sun-shin of Muhammad “Yazukee” Wahyudi, while the latter anchored the front line—fueling a swift 17-9 victory in under 13 minutes to level the series.

KarlTzy took a different approach in Game 3 but produced the same result, unleashing Leomord and delivering a dominant carry performance that accounted for 14 of Team Liquid’s 26 kills in nearly 16 minutes of action, pushing the Filipino squad  to within one win of a lower bracket finals date against the Selangor Red Giants.

However, Alter Ego appeared to have figured them out by Game 4, rolling out an ultra-aggressive composition anchored by Arfy’s Freya, who hounded OHEB all game long and put Team Liquid on the back foot, paving the way for a one-sided 17–7 win in just 12 minutes that sent the series to a decisive Game 5.

The loss marks a heartbreaking end to a remarkable campaign for the reigning MPL PH champions, who captured both MPL PH seasons, clinched the Mid-Season Cup, and secured gold at the Southeast Asian Games.

Team Liquid wrapped up the world tilt in fourth place, earning $60,000 (around ₱3.6 million) in prize money.