Well, part of the problem is that the word RPG has come to encompass such a large group of sub-genres, it's hard to find out what it means anymore. RPG elements has invaded pretty much every game, while at the same time, the stuff that, for old-school gamers, used to be the very nature of RPG, has more or less disappeared from the modern iterations of the genre.
We come up with a load of acronyms (ARPG, JRPG, SRPG, ...) to try to make sense of what we play, but the industry still use the abstract RPG, as Maylander said, because that's what Joe Average saw on the box of the last game he enjoyed (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, ...)
Right now, when I see those three letters on a non specialized website, it means either :
- there's stats and progression (Stalker and GTA san Adreas are RPGs)
- there's elves/magic/swords (Mount and Blade, Zelda and Magicka are RPGs)
- there's a weird but kinda deep story (Syberia, Heavy Rain are RPG)
Looks like we'll have to put up with it until we can come up with a simple definition of what is, actually, when you go to the bottom of it, a Computer Role Playing Game.
(And being new and all that, and not having lurked long enough before registering, I apologize if that has already been said a frakload of times).