World of Warcraft is under attack. The 3m US players of the online warfare game, populated by monster-baiting characters, are being outnumbered by an army of 4.5m amassed by an independent video game developer from Cambridge, England.

Runescape, a game that, like Activision Blizzard’s WoW, has skill-building quests and conquests, has been developed by Jagex. Unlike WoW, which is sold as a boxed product in shops and requires the download of large software files, players need only a web browser to get started on Runescape.