The 2000 Game of the Year is Diablo II.
The runner up is The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

Welcome to the 2000’s, a decade we might as well call the PS2000’s.  Most of this decade was dominated by the PS2, an unstoppable sales juggernaut with a huge library of great games.  In spite of this, it is not difficult to find fans on gaming forums who loved the Dreamcast, GameCube or Xbox.  PC gaming also continued to go strong through the early part of the decade, although arcade gaming became virtually nonexistent outside of Japan.

We start this decade with the year 2000, a transition year.  Generation 6 was just getting started in 2000, and we were still seeing great games come from the Generation 5 systems even as they were winding down during their final main year.  So, without further ado, here are the games for the year 2000:

Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC)
Bioware makes improvements on the original with the release of Baldur’s Gate II.  Not only has this game sold over 2 million copies, but it is the 9^th highest ranked PC game on Metacritic of all time.

Diablo II (PC/Mac)
Looks like it’s time to face the devil again.  Blizzard continued their winning streak with the release of Diablo II, which sold over 4 million copies total.

Deus Ex (PC/Mac)
Warren Spector designs this freeform and immersive game to much critical acclaim.  Deus Ex was named the “best PC game of all time” by both PC Gamer and a reader poll in PC Zone.  It would also sell over 1 million copies.

The Sims (PC/Mac)
Will Wright develops the ultimate life simulation game.  The Sims would become the best- selling PC game of all time up to that point with over 11.5 million copies sold.

Final Fantasy IX (Playstation)
FF9 was envisioned by the developers as a retrospective for the series, and it would also be the last FF game that series creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, would work on from beginning to end.  Final Fantasy IX would sell over 5.5 million copies on the Playstation.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Playstation/PC/GBC/Dreamcast)
Do amazing skateboard tricks just like the legendary Tony Hawk.  Pro Skater 2 is currently the third highest rated game of all time on Metacritic.  It has also sold over 5.3 million units across all platforms.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (N64)
By reusing the game engine from Ocarina of Time, Nintendo managed to ship out another Zelda game, Majora’s Mask, just 2 years later.  Majora’s Mask would sell over 3.3 million units on the N64.

Paper Mario (N64)
Since Squaresoft was no longer making Mario RPG’s for Nintendo, Intelligent Systems was recruited to make this first game in the Paper Mario series.  Paper Mario would sell over 1.3 million copies.

Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast)
You’ll be tripping as pirates in the sky with crystals.  This Dreamcast RPG would later be ported to the GameCube as Skies of Arcadia Legends.

Other (please specify)
If you think another game deserves to be "Game of the Year" other than one of the 9 I listed above, then please vote “Other” and say your game in the comments.  If the "Other" category takes at least 2nd place and no other game gets at least 40% of the vote, then I will do a runoff vote including the most mentioned game(s) from the comments.

Voting for 2000 Game of the Year will end on Saturday, Oct 28 at 11:59 PM, EST.

Here are some other notable games from the year 2000:

American McGee’s Alice (PC)
Counter-Strike (PC)
Escape from Monkey Island (PC)
Icewind Dale (PC)
No One Lives Forever (PC)
Red Alert 2 (PC)
Shogun: Total War (PC)
Dragon Quest VII (Playstation)
Driver 2 (Playstation)
Mega-Man Legends 2 (Playstation)
Spider-Man (Playstation)
Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Playstation)
Vagrant Story (Playstation)
Banjo-Tooie (N64)
Excitebike 64 (N64)
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64)
Mario Tennis (N64)
Perfect Dark (N64)
Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64)
Sin and Punishment (N64)
WWF No Mercy (N64)
Jet Set Radio (Dreamcast)
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast)
Resident Evil: Code Veronica (Dreamcast)
Dark Cloud (PS2)
Dynasty Warriors 2 (PS2)
Midnight Club: Street Racing (PS2)

Easy choice for me this year, Skies of Arcadia.

This is one of those oddly interesting RPGs where the appeal isn’t so much in its story. This one is about exploring one of the most beautiful worlds ever conceived of: a vast 3D sky world of floating islands, beautiful scenery, towns, and kingdoms.

I was terribly sick with mononucleosis and far from home this year, and this game brought me a lot of joy during that time period. So much joy that I played it three times through in a relatively short time - replaying a game isn’t out of the ordinary for me, but it is for a game over 40 hours. One of my favourite elements is building up a town and collecting a ship crew to live there (and aboard your ship).

Along with Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Chrono Trigger, I’m hoping this game will make it to Switch and/or Switch 2.

This was one of the first games that showed the promise of 3D in RPGs. I remember the first time in Sailor’s town where I looked out the window of the lighthouse (I think) and saw one of the most beautiful views I’d ever seen in a game - a reef of hundreds of floating rocks with various boats and such weaving in and around… it was something that was so easy to miss as the game doesn’t exactly lead you to look out the window. The site of the reef and the boats could also be seen from many other points on the island, but this particular window was my favourite spot. Skies of Arcadia became one of the first 3D games where I’d go sightseeing - to this day, I think the only games I’ve had similar experiences with are Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Breath of the Wild.

The game was developed by Rieko Kodama’s team (known for Phantasy Star), and if you ask me, this was her masterpiece. So, it’s a shame that it seems to be about her only game that isn’t getting regular rereleases.

For me, it's gotta be Banjo Tooie.
It was an ambitious sequel with a huge amount of content and variety, and a ton of Rare's trademark quirky charm.

One of the last hurrahs of Rare's golden age, the N64, and the age of the collectathon platformer, and one of the best of all three.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Ridiculously fun - it's so easy to pick up and play, and really difficult to stop. The soundtrack is brilliant too.

Great sequels in 2000 - Baldur's Gate II, Thief II, Diablo II
Great new games - Deus Ex, Majora's Mask, Hitman: Codename 47, The Operative: No One Lives Forever

And I would easily pick Deus Ex as the best and my personal favourite game from that year, and one of the most influential FPS-RPG hybrids - if it was any other year.

Cause this is the year that The Sims launched. And Sims were just something really different, not only a great game with a lot of innovations, but one of those Blue Ocean games that attracted new players and made a new market, something like what Myst did a few years before it. Actually, Myst was best-selling PC game until The Sims, which went on to sell 6+ millions till 2002, settling at around 11+ millions by 2015 on PC alone (with 15+ millions total).

The 2000s was the time I slowly fell off gaming as I did in the 90s. I came not back until the Wii roped me back in. But for 2000 I still played some of these games. Mostly the sequels: Baldur's Gate II, Diablo II. Another great game and probably underappreciated gem is American McGee's Alice. Majora's Mask I only played many years later once I was back into gaming and on console for the first time.

Anyways, I am going with Diablo II here, it improved the formula more than BGII and was overall a really fun game. Sadly I feel it lost a bit of the atmosphere of the first game, but I think more than the first game Diablo II is the blueprint for the genre with many, many games we see still until today.

Resident evil code veronica. Best old school resident evil and still the hardest resident evil game

Diablo II is still one of those Blizzard games I haven't tried yet (along with Warcraft III) even though I really liked the first Diablo.  Later I played a demo of Diablo III and I just couldn't get into it.  I think I'd like Diablo II though, and I've definitely heard lots of praise for it.

The easiest choice of this whole project, Final Fantasy IX is my personal favourite game of all time. Although there are several other great games on the list, nothing comes even close to FFIX as far as I'm concerned.