Which is the better way to introduce a BBEG?

[Pants]

Even better...
Have the technomage dude hire the PC's for a couple of seemingly unrelated series of quests. Later on technomage fantastically betrays them and disappears from site for a while. The PC's now have an archenemy, who they hate, who is pretty powerful and quite out of their reach. Their anger will fester and they will want to take out this guy.

It is quite important that you don't have this guy appear and fight the PC's 'just to show off his power.' This can really piss off some players and there's the relatively small chance that things will spiral out of control and you'll have one very dead archenemy.

I'd also stay away from the Deus Ex Machina type stuff, that can also piss off players.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Even better...
Have the technomage dude hire the PC's for a couple of seemingly unrelated series of quests. Later on technomage fantastically betrays them and disappears from site for a while. The PC's now have an archenemy, who they hate, who is pretty powerful and quite out of their reach. Their anger will fester and they will want to take out this guy.

It is quite important that you don't have this guy appear and fight the PC's 'just to show off his power.' This can really piss off some players and there's the relatively small chance that things will spiral out of control and you'll have one very dead archenemy.

I'd also stay away from the Deus Ex Machina type stuff, that can also piss off players.

Well, like I said in my last post, my players are very...different. They seem to enjoy dealing with powers vastly more powerful than themselves. My brother had a bunch 0f 16+ level characters chasing us around when we were under level 10. And they seemed to love it. Even though one lost his hand to one, that made him even more eager to kill him.

This still confuses me to no end.

 

[Caliber]

It sounds like its not something your group would like, but one of my favorite BBEG intros is the wounded soldier.

Have the BBEG be near death, and have him be assaulted by opponents. Maybe have a field of dead orcs around him with a few still standing, coming towards him as he barely clings to life.

The heroic players, sensing someone in danger rush in and save him. They'll end up kicking themselves later when they realize who exactly they saved.