they could have put Drakensang in that list too.
i'm just kinda afraid that these pseudo-RPGs are taking the place of the real ones, and that most critics don't even bother identifying them as something else than RPG. that's the only thing that really bugs me about this list.
if with hardcore RPG titles you mean NWN2 or Drakensang i must dissapoint you, those are actually pretty "user friendly", or at least they are normal RPGs.
titles like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 are action games with RPG elements (personally i even liked mass effect but defining it as a true RPG, is like saying call of duty is a RTS).

What makes mass effect not a true RPG? You build a character, assign skills that make a difference to how the game plays, make decisions that affect the story...
Sure you're railroaded down a path but you are in most RPGs anyway. Shit even Planescape Torment, in pursuing the story you end up in one of two places, a corpse if you use the blade of the immortal on yourself or in the fortress of regrets.
Fallout, you end up popping down to visit the master and kill him, talk him to death or volunteer to become a supermutant. Whether you get the water chip, save the ghouls or whatever only affects the post-ending wrapup
Fallout 2, you do much the same at the enclave base
Fallout 3, you do much the same at project purity
If you pursue the story in a game, you walk along a statically defined path. There might be a few branches that move you in seemingly different directions and the path might be wider or narrower in certain places but it's always a linear progression. Sure you can finish Fallout in what, 7 minutes or something but thats just flat out cheating (using out of game knowledge that your character has no hope of having to finish a quest he doesn't even know about yet. No different in my book to using level skip and god mode cheats).

Stereotype RPG C&C/non-linearity "chart", or whatever I should call it.

Very apt

i apologise for not being clear before and making a bad example, imho Mass effect (and similar games) should have their own subgenre, just like hack'n slash games. to avoid confusion in journalism, and kids thinking that an rpg is an fps with choiches; or even worse that publishers get the silly idea that every new rpg should be a fps.

What were the criteria for the list? "Best" and "Worst" don't really mean anything by themselves.
Most published lists are "Five pretty good games that sold a lot and are made by at least four different companies." The IGN list is business as usual. Most player lists are "Five games that show I'm smarter than everyone else."

I still don't understand what it is about Mass Effect that disqualifies it as a roleplaying game.

Debating if something is an RPG or not isn't even interesting. It's a lot more fun and meaningful to see if it's a good RPG or not.

I think it may be the following:
1. It tells fairly linear story.
2. It has guns.
3. Bioware is now part of Electronic Arts.
4. It was popular.
5. My favorite game is the measure of all RPGness.

To be honest, I couldn't even give you a consistent definition of a computer roleplaying game even based solely on my own opinions. It's a big, big genre, and much like simulations or strategy games or action games, the examples of one corner of the universe look a lot different from the ones at the other end. It's only once you get more specific that much meaning can come out of it.

The list is focused on games made only in the last 5 years, so neither Fallout 1 nor Morrowind would qualify.

IGN has been losing it for some time now, guess this was just the final drop.
I'll never visit their site again >.<

It's rather simple: at its core, an RPG is defined by the fact that it lets you play a specific character and will let you take decisions that fit this character, so two characters will play differently, fight differently, solve problems differently, etc. There is also a strong emphasis that the character skill matter more than the player skill, though some of the sub-genres offer a more action gameplay. Of course, to be a good CRPG, the game has to give you the occasion to use those skills in meaningful ways, else why bother to differentiate the characters in the first place if they all play the same?
And after that you got tons of sub-genre: dungeon crawler, story driven, action RPG, sandbox, "classic". Those can of course be blended, and to make the matter even more complicated other genre of games can borrow RPG elements.

How do the dungeon crawlers like Might & Magic fit into that definition?