Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Last week we started this feature with three potential options for our players.  We received over 30 entries for each character, and after a lot of deliberation we’ve come to an agreement on the winners.  Here then, are the best entries for The Balverine, Crimson Fate, and The Broiler.

Crimson Fate: A big hearty congratulations to Scott Xie too, for his submission of the Crimson Fate. A lot of people really nailed this one, but in the end we all agreed that Scott's was the best at capturing the back-story on this hero.

The Broiler: And lastly we have Sam Halwa's interpretation of The Broiler. Sam went into great detail with power selections and his own artistic vision. So let's let him do the talking:

As you can see, I've taken all the fire powers. Psionic healing is only there for survivability, and can be colored orange so as to be considered 'fiery'. It's pretty much interchangeable with resurgence, but I like to try out different things. Rocket jump and chest beam are only there for show. The real action is in the advantages, which cause DoTs to spread around easier and can cause slowdown and knockback efffects, as well as being able to cancel out travel powers. I gave him as much endurance and recovery boosts as I could with slight boosts to presence and constitution, again, for survivability.

Now, for the visual design I deviated far from the original concept. This is for two reasons; first because many a fire based hero will spend much of his time covered in fire effects and thus the designs and symbols on his costume can easily be obscured. Fire flight is the main culprit there. Second, I read the name wrong. I thought is was 'The Boiler' and my mind set to work designing a man covered in gray metal armor adorned with rivets. Plus most of the pieces I chose couldn't have a flame pattern on them. However, I chose to just stick with it and I really like how it ended up.

Taking a cue from the line 'living flame contained inside a human body', My concept grew into a man wearing a massive suit of armor that didn't so much protect him than it protected everyone else from the intense heat his body constantly emanated. The inner layer of his costume is a padded flame retardant jumpsuit. the metal plates of the outer layer contain numerous heat sinks and cooling systems that run the heat generated by his body into the large furnace-like backpack. This backpack stores the thermal energy for later use. He wears goggles because he can only naturally see in thermal vision and requires the goggles to see normally. He also cannot speak without breathing fire so he wears a grill over his mouth. When he wants to breath fire he can make the grill open, and when he wants to just talk to someone he keeps it shut. As a final touch I gave him large 'welders mitt' style gloves and had them blackened around the hand part and lighter towards the ends to simulate the after effects of his powers making them all burnt and sooty.