I don't quite remember when I joined...either 2001 or 2002, I know it was during the summer of my tenth grade year anyway. (I suppose it's 2002 now that I look at my "JOIN DATE" haha) The reason I came to GW was because I was interested in using gamemaking programs. The first one I came across was that Hamster Republic one (if anyone knows what I'm talking about) and I eventually came across a site that had this DBZ game done in RPGMaker 95. I played around with RM95 for a time before a google search lead me on to this thing called RPG Maker 2000 and the first site that came up in my seach that caught my interest was Gaming World. I browsed for a bit before joining but once I did I met quite a few people who helped me out in getting started on my projects. RPGoddess back when she had her own project (Tales of Muiragi: Side Story) Legacy001 (don't recall what project he was doing but I think it was prior to Naufragar or at least an early version of it) Rusty (his Secret of Mana ABS system was the bees knees and was my guide in learning the ins and outs of RM2k) Bloodrose (who contacted often, along with Legacy and Rusty about how to do certain things because their projects seemed so advanced at the time) and I'm pretty sure I had help from the likes of Dragonslayer, Moriason and Phatradeph.
But yeah, the main reason I came to GW was for gamemaking purposes, but I eventually found myself staying for other reasons. In time I came to know quite a lot of people I considered friends like Jumar, Afura, Erave, Tenchu, Fire Mage, Mencius... way too many to keep on naming really. Actually, the whole "Jawesome" thing I picked up I actually picked up from Senior Behemoth before he up and disappeared for some time a few years back; he was a damn cool guy back in the day...likely still is though I haven't seen him years. I still remember the whole music circle fad with the rap circle, the metal circle, the REAL metal circle and whatnot, the Pokemon Card and Plushies fad that was going on, the growth of Erave's community based game, the start of the GW Awards and loads of other stuff. Oh and who could forget Lith's "Jizzy Riblets" prank call?

In time the place sort of became more of a second home than just a message board community. I don't come around as often anymore or rather as much as I'd like mainly because I've moved on out of RM2k mainly as a result of time constraints, otherwise I'd love to get back into it... and despite some bumps along the way and spats with a few other members for the most part I still consider this my "home" as far as message boards are concerned. It was the first online community where I felt like a permanent member and wanted to keep it that way so I'll likely continue to pop in so long as GW is still around.
With that said, now that I think about it I've been attached to this place for nearly a decade. Scary...then again, maybe not? :P