Virtual Life - Real Skills?

I think the reason why Second Life is not really as successful as MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games)like World of Warcraft is the lack of fantasy or game factors involved. When people delve into a virtual reality, they usually don't want to re-play real life. In my opinion those fantasy game worlds are a promising environment for learning a language. You usually have to work in groups to achieve certain goals in the virtual world and thus have to communicate with other players who can be native speakers of your target language. From my experience, German online role-playing gamers attain pretty good English skills through their hour-long contact with English speaker in the game world. As I said before, those games are more likely to involve language learners in communication as a second life based on reality. One might argue, of course that we don't want our students to be able to organize a group of trolls fighting against orks, instead of being able to order food at a restaurant.
However, when I played English adventure games as a kid, it helped me improve my language skills a lot, although it was fantasy and I don't have to argue with pirates in the real world.