Wrecking Ball’s cosmetics hit the Overwatch PTR

Overwatch skins for a new hero usually get dropped straight onto the PTR with little fanfare or ceremony. Wrecking Ball, however, has had a red carpet rolled out for him!

In a two hour Skin Reveal stream today, Arnold Tsang (Assistant Art Director) and Ben Zhang (Concept Artist) hosted a live drawing and discussion session around one of Hammond’s new Legendary Skins, as well as discussing the creation of Wrecking Ball as a hero.

Wrecking Ball as a concept is apparently pretty “old” in Overwatch history. The idea of a rolling ball hero was bounced around the development team before Overwatch released, with Hammond the hamster only being added as a pilot when the concept was revived for Hero 28. We also learnt amongst other things, that Hammond’s fur color is based on Arnold Tsang’s pet hamster from when he was in college. That hamster’s name? ZugZug, obviously, from the iconic saying of the Peon and other Orc units in Warcraft 3, which Zhang and his dorm mates played rather significant amounts of. Awww.

Immediately after the stream ended, Wrecking Ball cosmetics were put onto the PTR. Here’s a video with facts from the Art stream - timecodes are below to skip around the video for particular sections!

Skins - 0:09

Emotes - 5:35

Victory Poses - 6:59

Voice Lines - 7:54

Sprays - 9:13

Highlight Intros - 12:16