Yes, just PR crap. Nowadays they make RPGs (ARPGs) for action gamers to have bigger sales. And action games are marketed as RPGs to have bigger sales again. Marketing departments rule in both marketing and development.
The situation is beyond that point. Marketing a game as a RPG to boost sales helped to get to the current situation but for a game like The Division, it will sell on its own.
The Division is RPG by any absence of standard that is. So called RPGers wanted RGPs to be about everything but roleplaying. They chose to characterize RPGs by various means, dismissing that the primary dimension of a RPG is roleplaying.
As a result, a game like The Division must be considered as a RPG.
The Division passes things like the final (?) definition of RPGs.
There is no crap in telling that it is a RGP because this game is what people want to be a RPG.
That argument would be invalid - once you start playing them, you simply can't have doubts if Skyrim or MassEffect are RPGs or shooters.
How exactly The Division is close to Skyrim or ME games we have yet to see.
Skyrim has zero role in it. Which makes acting out of a role a very delicate task.
The Division is RPG as a consequence of so called RPGers'will to dismiss roleplaying as the characterizing feature in a RPG.
It was predicted some time ago: expecting that other genres could not, by following their own evolution line, include elements that so called RPGs sold as being exclusive to RPGs, was non sense.
The consequence is direct: more and more games are RPGs (the future is RPG), not because of developpers telling crap, but because of developpers following the so RPGers trend.
It was also predicted that when it was going to happen, so called RPGers were to deny that the games that their own very subjectiveness should qualify as RPGs are indeed RPGs.
One subjective point was, for example, that developpers dropping the magic word was deemed enough to make a game into a RPG.
In this case, the devs did it. Repelled.
Just as predicted.
