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Spending a bank holiday weekend as a level 99 magician might not be everybody's cup of tea, but when the alternative is a trip to Ikea with the family, the attractions of RuneScape, a sword-and-sorcery online computer game, are at least understandable.

On January 21, Martin Luther King Day in the US, when stock markets in the rest of the world were going into meltdown, a record 250,000 people logged into the realm of Gielinor, the creation of Jagex, a little-known Cambridge company.

A million people subscribe to RuneScape, paying £3.20 a month in Britain, and the equivalent of $5 (£2.50) elsewhere, for unfettered access. After the juggernaut of World of Warcraft - which has ten million subscribers - RuneScape is arguably the next most successful multiplayer game, although its ethos is completely different. There is no need to own special software to play it, as RuneScape runs on any browser using Java, although that means the graphics are simple.

Unlike Warcraft, the Jagex philosophy is to ensure that a large part of RuneScape can be played free. Fans, of course, get lured into paying; membership gives them access to more land, more skills and spells, and freedom from adverts. When Jagex allowed subscribers to create their own houses, such is people's obsession with property that 100,000 signed up as paying subscribers. The number of free players is still far greater: in all, six million have played over the past fortnight.

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