How does any of that make the games influential?

If you want to talk about being influential you'd mention voice acting when you say FFX (I think it was the first game to feature it, if not then it really hasn't been influential at all). As for the other games, I doubt they could be classified as influential.

I noticed that as well WoW.  It's realy hard to try and figure out what games were influential.  I was trying to figure out if Disgaea helped to make SRPG's more popular, but I'm not really sure it did.

Well Baldur's Gate did revive RPG genre on the PC, and it's still the most brilliant RPG ever :P.

I don't really get why Oblivion is there, sure it's a good game, but it hasn't had much influence on the genre. Lack of any Ultima at all is also quite suprising.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Don't worry. Hopefully the elimination phase will take care of these quickly. Depending on the number of nominations, I may not even count reasons that simply praise a particular game like that.

Are you talking about Miles' list? Yes it is surprising! Help us fix it! Let's get some of the fundamentals in there. I've already nominated an Ultima.

I'll name a few:

FFIV: Caused a great leap forward in RPG storytelling.

Phantasy Star Online: Bought MMORPG to consoles for the first time.

FFVII: Can largely be credited with increasing the popularity of RPGs in the west and arguably played a defining role in the performance of the PSX.

terrible list. It's clear that this Miles guy only played RPGs on Consoles.

There are ALOT of very influential PC RPGs:

Diablo - Revived the entire Hack n' Slash, Action RPGs.

World of Warcraft - Put the entire MMORPG sub-genre into mainstream and forced the other developers to up the quality of their games.

Ultima - influenced the birth of JRPGs!!!

Neverwinter Nights - pushed forth the modding community more than any other RPG.

Fallout - Influenced heavily on the choice/consequence structures.

Arguably that was Everquest or Ultima Online. Everquest was the first MMO I ever heard non-PC gamers talking about.

Really when it comes to influence, you need to look for "firsts" and "copycats."  If you see a game that does something first or something so well that everyone copies it, you have an influential game.  WoW is influential due to the latter.  It struck gold and significantly raised the market cap on MMOs far more than past games could.  It's not about being mainstream or anything like that so much as just becoming big and making boatloads of money.  In doing this, it caused a lot of other companies to start turning their attention to MMOs and we have a lot more of them coming out as a result. 

That is influential.

If we're talking purely on the "influential" front, then I could rattle off a better list in my sleep. In no particular order (because all of these are/were highly influential, and ranking them on the basis of pure opinion is stupid):

Betrayal at Krondor
Rogue (and/or NetHack)
Might & Magic 6
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
Baldur's Gate
Pokemon Red/Blue
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall (or Arena, if you prefer)
Final Fantasy IV
Ultima III: Exodus
Lunar: The Silver Star

That original list is just silly as hell. The only thing that most of those games influenced was the collective pocketbooks of a small legion of otakus.

No Dragon Quest I or Seiken Densetsu 2 on this list makes it fail hard.

I would have....

1. Dragon Quest I - Did away with dice rolls to introduce the JRPG
2. Final Fantasy I - Introduced the East to multiple party members
3. Chrono Trigger - Masterful storytelling, and a unique battle system
4. Phantasy Star - Multiple worlds/maps for the main character to play on and great storytelling.
5. Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 2 - Popular ARPG that defined the ARPG genre for many years and revisions.
6. Might & Magic I - One of the (obvious) first CRPGs made, and a very good game for 1986.
7. Betrayl at Krondor - Masterful CRPG that intergrated cutscenes, 3d movement and terrain, isometric battles, weapon crafting, and about 50 other things to the genre.
8. Morrowind - The popularization and eventual port of CRPGs to consoles have Morrowind to thank. Morrowind was an awesome PC/Xbox game, and sold well enough to be the instigator for the new CRPG/Console revolution.
9. Final Fantasy VII - Not really special in terms of bringing new stuff to the table...Except for 10 million RPG gamers.
10. Ultima Online - One of the first graphical MMOs to market. Very critical for what we've seen in the past 10 years. EQ and WoW get a positive mention too.