Last time I checked, World of Warcraft was about orcs, elves, giant bulls, and dead people running around, completing quests for goods, and beating up poor defenseless creatures. So exactly when was World of Warcraft incorporated into a plan to teach English? Can you say in English, "That level one noob Blood Elf totally pwned me in PvP!"

From the article:

At Game Developers Conference last month, Edd Schneider and Kai Zeng presented their poster, English Speaking Players as In-Game Content: New Ideas for Marketing to Youth in Asia.

Their theory — that online gaming can be used to teach English to Asian teens — is based on a project they ran two years ago with American and Chinese students at Suny Potsdam, where Schneider is a professor and Zeng a student of Information Communication Technology.

The results, they say, were outstanding, and now it's time for games like World of Warcraft to break down the server boundaries and let people play together across the globe. Gamasutra spoke with Professor Edd Schneider:

Read the full article over at gamasutra.com