As I said, it's most likely the fanboy in me coming out. I love Jedi Outcast, I played it for 3 years straight onlne(CTF was awesome), but I don't know if it's better than KOTOR.

Look, we get it.  You didn't like KOTOR and think other PC RPGs are superior.  Just because its not the best RPG ever made doesn't make it a bad game.

There was tons of glaring problems with KOTOR.  But much of it simply came from them trying to do so many things in one game.  As well as its scope causing many of its gameplay issues (long cutscenes, huge environments causing you to spend hours running around, etc).  You can't make the best game (or RPG) ever made in your first attempt.  Hopefully Old Republic will work out all those problems.

I also find it ironic that a lot of the problems I had with KOTOR were the same problems I had with games like FFXII.  Games that were just too big and had too much going on for their own good.  There seemed to be a lot of those towards the end of last gen.

But it does disqualify it from being the best Star Wars game. Also KOTOR was most definitely not BioWare's first attempt at all at RPGs.

I didn't find any of those things to be a problem in KOTOR. I got around the planets much more easily than I can get around in Oblivion, I felt that the cutscenes and story had great pacing, and the difficulty was just about right.

Indeed.  As I already said, I would say that goers to Tie Fighter, followed by Jedi Outcast and Academy tied.

Hopefully though, The Old Republic will improve on KOTOR so much that it will become one of the best MMOs ever made AND the best Star Wars games ever made.

I'm all up for that!!

You don't just get to disqualify a game because you don't like it >> To me, KOTOR 1&2 are the best Star Wars games ever.

As for SWTOR, i can't wait. Imperial Agent looks really cool, cause i love assassin like characters. Sith Warrior would be fun though too.

You can empiracally show that KOTOR is more dumbed down that RPGS at the time. Meanwhile using the same empirical evidence you can show that TIE Fighter and Jedi Knight were actually groundbreaking.

We're not disqualifying a game simply because we don't like it.  I actually really liked KOTOR and notice how everyone in this thread is either interested or even excited for Old Republic to improve on the KOTOR model.  However, like vlad hit upon, there's a difference between being a fun game and being the 'best' in its genre or the 'best' Star Wars game.  For when they came out and arguably still to this day, games like Tie Fighter and Jedi Outcast are still the best Star Wars games.  And still some of the best games in their genre.  Whereas KOTOR is just one of many western RPGs, like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect.  Few would say its even Biowares best game.

Ooooh, empirical evidence...

http://www.bioware.com/games/knights_old_republic/awards/