Jeff Freeman
My only reaction was “What.. the.. fuck…” when I stumbled across a thread on a forum announcing the news of Jeff’s death. I had a hard time believing it, actually. But more and more confirmation rolled in as the thread got longer. Then, a link to Lum’s blog where he was confirming it as well. It sunk in, and disbelief turned to sadness.
No, I didn’t know Jeff. Not in real life, and barely online. He read my blog sometimes, and I read his.
I have no idea what he thought of my blog, but I know what I thought of his. Or more, what I thought of him.
Any time he posted here, or any time I read his blog, one main thought would come to mind.
“Wow, this is a smart cookie.”
Whenever he wrote, his intelligence and wit came through vividly. He was unique in his ability to force me to read something twice, and then crack a smile. Because of that, his is one of the few blogs I read on a regular basis.
Talk to ya later, Jeff.
-Az
October 1st, 2008 at 12:45 am
I hate to link somewhere in this post (I avoided it a couple times already), but below is a link to Raph’s blog where he shared some stories about Jeff that are very touching.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/09/30/jeff-dundee-freeman/
Good to read if you don’t know who Jeff Freeman is. Good to read if you do. Good to read if you were sort of inbetween, like me.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
wow, i remember lum the mad.. i don’t know what to say.
speechless,
im sure he will be missed as a person who obviously took interest in what most of us who played uo cared about. after reading about some of his accomplishments with coding im sad that he is gone. He probably had a wealth of knowledge.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Lum’s name is actually Scott Jennings.
Jeff Freeman was a UO shard and SWG designer. I never played his shard, but I’ve read just a bit about it and I’m fairly certain that he’s a better designer that I’ll ever be.
Guy was a smart cookie.
I found the news particularly hard because his blog was one of the few I read, and he was one of the few industry folks that’d actually speak to me. You know, being that I’m a jerk at all.
(Now, I’m just kidding.. industry folks are great and most will speak to me, but not many go out of their way to post on my blog.. that’s for sure.)
Either way. I didn’t know Jeff well, but of what I did know, he was a very cool guy. It was odd, because I fully planned on hiring the man in the future should the opportunity have arisen.