Oh so manny. hard to choose one. or two, but well, atleast ill put Final Fantasy 8 here.. played it on PC, only "bad" thing about it was the enemy scaling whit you.. Everquest and Everquest 2 for the MMO category.

there are moore but ill stick whit these for now.

Looking to the future. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age origins will be amazing. If we want to include an MMO. I thinks Star Wars the Old Republic might go down as the greatest RPG of all time. It has a huge emphasis on story and the greatest amount of voice acting ever in the entertainment industry. Plus its Bioware and Star Wars what else do you need?

umm do you mean Knights Of The Old Republic?

I believe he means the new MMO from the makers of the original Knights of the Old Republic. It's simply called 'Star Wars: The Old Repulic'.

oh ok thank you

Baldurs Gate 2

Temple of Elemental Evil.

Fallout 1 & 2. Theres been a couple of great RPGs over the years but theres nothing that has come close ever since.

I would have to pick Freelancer as the best RPG in my paltry RPG collection. The game itself had a lot of potential, and when hooked up with one of many mods, fulfills most of that potential. And it involves spaceships, which is always a plus.
Fallout 3 would come in second, mostly because it has a whole bunch of little things which add up to be a big pain. What with the "game over" at the end, the (IMO) annoying real time combat which uses dice rolls (seriously, if I aim somewhere, I want to hit there, not where a random diceroll tells it to go, if it were merely a spread radius I would be fine, it just handles it really badly what with the bullet swerving away from the target.) and some areas the lighting was very bad, especially on the player. At some points, the lighting was so bad the weapon and arms of the player showed up completely black.

Old classic: Phantasy Star 4.

The story and graphics (at the time) were unlike anything I saw; Plus it was a nice change from the classic "Final Fantasy" way of doing RPGs at the time.

Temple of Elemenal Evil: if only for the combat sequences being actually in initiative order.

Arcanum: Steampunk FTW

Mount&Blade: not quite a RPG in the classic sence, but it's pretty close.

Cel, +1, for the heretic quote

I think Deus Ex can be classified as an RPG however like Demigod, it is a cross between "pure" genres. 

But I definitely see the point that it is an FPS with RPG elements, however the elements were fantastic. Morph, as Ryat mentioned Deus Ex was fantastic, DXII sucked - they removed the best parts of DX1 and consolized it.  They are currently working on DX3 with the promise that it won't suck.  We'll see though.

Some great games have been mentioned, bards tale is definitely one of my all time favorites, along with the eye of the beholder series, ultima, NWN, M&M, Oblivion etc.

A couple the I loved that aren't on here as well are:

Master of Magic (c64) was great to play, i think someone on the forums here uses the MoM cover art as their avatar,

Dungeon Master (Amiga) was a classic as well.

Stonekeep (PC) was just a lot of fun but more hack n slash as opposed to role playing. 

Arcanum

Planescape: Torment

Baldurs Gate 2

Neverwinter Nights

Morrowind

Morpheas: you seem to have missed the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post I thought the "get off my lawn" comment made it obvious enough, but apparently not. Anyways, it *is* a brilliant RPG and highly recommended if you value openness of action, though even the best interfaces seem painfully outdated graphic-wise by today's standards.

Alway: Freelancer isn't an RPG, it's a space sim. If you liked it, I'd recommend you try X3, I have Reunion and its excellent, and I've heard Terran Conflict is even better.

Though I must say I'm somewhat dissapointed at the lack of mentions for Jade Empire. Both its successor Mass Effect and its predecessor Knights of the Old Republic have plenty of votes, but no love for good ol' JE? c'mon, people, it certainly wasn't *that* bad.

Ok I'll seperate the shooter RPG. DEUS EX! Fucking best Shooter RPG there ever was and will be... most likely... Only hope for the best with the 3rd one thats coming out...

Ok RPG... KOTOR, would of been KOTOR 2 but LUCASART was retarded with the 1 year they gave for the project... I sure did play lots of Diablo 2 back in the day...

MMO RPG... Eve Online.

Future RPG fav, most likely Dragon Age. 

if it counts as rpg, zelda, OoT in front of LttP. else, gothic (1st one, 2nd wih addon in close pursuit, forget about pt. 3).

There were a lot of good and very good ones:

Planescape Torment,

Deus Ex,

FF9,

Fallout 1 and 2

but the BEST one:

Xenogears. The story is unparalleled in my opinion.

Ultima V and Fallout 1-3 (although FO3 is the odd man out here I loved the game for its atmosphere).

Planescape: Torment should also get an honorable mention.

Bah, that reminded me: I completed overlooked Ultima IV. The first game I played where you actually had to role play; you HAD to become the embodiment of the virtues to finish the game. Definatly should be listed in this thread.

How is nethack not an RPG.  Are you not role playing a character?  Every selection is very different unless you just melee the whole game, which you should have noticed you died a hell of alot faster as a mage  

Since a picture says more then a thousand words....

Yes Jade Empire is really good but.... not one of my favorites. KOTOR was just better.

Although these are different games (not sequels) they are from Bioware and that says it all

I think Jade Empire deserves an honorable mention.

We have a lot of votes on KOTOR and DeusEx he he

BG2, Daggerfall (after bugs were out), Star Control 2 (yes, it counts as an RPG :)), Planescape Torment, MM6. 

Special mentions to NWN, SSI's Goldbox games and a little known RPG/action/puzzle/strategy/trading game called Spellcraft. 

Yeah Spellcraft is really nice! i havent played the first, but i have Spellcraft 2 and it is really good imo.

As an avid RPG-gamer, I feel like facepalming half this thread.

Also, for a personal favourite: Planescape: Torment.

A short answer to this question is Phantasy Star Online.

Or maybe Rhapsody   (Sarcasm detector is going off)