I have been thinking it would be pretty cool if there was an RPG that had a plot that was not tied to the character. For example Oblivion has a huge world but the story does not progress unless the player moves it. Is there a game that has a plot that progresses on its own and then have a variety of ending based on how much the player got involved. I guess something like Fallout 1&2 but more dynamic, not just different endings based on completing different quests but a story the player could weave in and out of along the way. Is there anything like that?

Edit: Nevermind I misread what you typed, sorry.

...did this actually happen to anyone? I kinda have always thought of it as press hype...

This can occur to some degree with Uplink. If you ignore the "main quest" so to speak, eventually it will progress without your interference. The news events still occur, and the final conflict still happens, but you aren't involved.

It's not exactly what you're getting at because it's more of a binary option. Either you start the main quest, or you don't and it happens without you. Once you opt in, you can't opt back out later. If you try, you'll get a game over (eventually). Still, it's nice occasionally to ignore the main quest and just do missions without having to worry about major deadlines.

There's also a (minor) degree of this in Wizardry 7. There are a number of NPCs who wander around, and go about making alliances and fighting with each other, and solving puzzles. But they really only affect the location of the map items, and don't have any real impact on the game world. It feels a bit more like you aren't the only person on the planet who's capable of getting stuff done, but their true influence is pretty small.

I played very little of it, it's still on my backlog.

But I remember a Zero Punctuation review of the game where he said it was annoying that a mission would come up to defend a position, sound like it was really urgent, then when he was still halfway to the objective a mission accomplished message would show up without him having done anything.

As much as I like tough RPGs that require a lot of tactics and thought, I hate the idea of quests which expire. Blah!

might be just bug that is called feature ;)

This is one of the features that has been promised for an upcoming RPG called Sui Generis - events in the game world proceed independently of the player, and the player can either get involved and change things or not. It remains to be seen how well they actually manage to pull it off.

J-RPG's do that quit often.
Suikoden is a good example there are 108 Stars (members) you can miss quiet a few. Still you can finish the game, but you may miss an interesting part of the story.
Valkyrie Profile has some time relented story elements. If you complete them you got new infos and even other finals.

Star Control 2. If I recall correctly, a variety of factions would be wiped out as the Kor'ah Death March proceeds. You can intervene, but you would have to know your flight plan ahead of time to save the various races that would ally with you, as some are closer to Kor'ah territory or threatened by one of the other races.

Never happened to me.
Played the games extensively and for a LONG time (e.g. STALKER ShoC in more than one month) and not only once, and it never happened to me, so I infirm that.

Unless he talks about some mods, since I only played vanilla versions of the game.


Edit: Also I would be interested in playing an RPG like OP asks about. It'd be a very interesting experience.

In Wizardry 7, you're competing with powerful faction NPCs for the same treasure. It's possible to trek through a dungeon and find that they've nabbed a piece of what you're looking for. Supposedly the game simulates their actual adventuring while you adventure, but I don't know if this is really true or not.

Maybe a MMORGP?