Stats

Total scanned characters

The scanning method is explained here.

Region	Realms	Guilds scanned	Characters scanned
US	246	61,448	3,293,058
Europe	265	63,502	3,397,761
Taiwan	46	4,816	587,624
Korea	33	1,591	218,563

I was somewhat surprised to see Europe coming out ahead of the US, but the heavily populated Russian realms probably made the difference. This doesn't reflect active subs of course - many subscribers have multiple 85s and many subscribers have none at all.

Biggest & smallest realms

By the number of scanned players.

Region	Smallest		Biggest
US	Tol Barad	1,514	Illidan	40,924
Europe	Vek'lor	2,988	Ravencrest	31,202
Taiwan	死亡之翼 (Deathwing)	9,546	血之谷 (Bleeding Hollow)	28,155
Korea	블랙무어 (Blackmoore)	294	듀로탄 (Durotan)	13,520

The difference between the low and high population servers is pretty extreme - 27 times in the US and 46 times in Korea. This is partially explained by the smaller realms being pretty new.

Biggest guilds

Based on the number of scanned players (active 85s).

Region	Realm	Guild	Players
US	Némesis (Nemesis)	Ðream Ðivinity	916
Europe	Shattered Hand	D A W N	941
Taiwan	銀翼要塞 (Silverwing Hold)	偽娘黑澀會	912
Korea	아즈샤라 (Azshara)	불양	727

It's hard to imagine what being in a guild of almost a thousand active 85s is like. Probably pretty different. That's 3 times the size of the whole active population on some realms.

Most insane guilds

Guilds with the most achievers.

Region	Realm	Guild	Insanes
US	Frostmane	War Front	16
Europe	Ревущий фьорд (Howling Fjord)	Синестезия	22
Taiwan	憤怒使者 (Wrathbringer)	神樣	14
Korea	라그나로스 (Ragnaros)	La Invictus	6

Guildmates often work on the achievement together, so seeing 2 or 3 from the same guild is fairly common. The Russains are pretty hardcore though - 37% more Insane than the number 2 guild.

Date of achievement

Based on when the achievement was completed.

Patch	Achievers
Before it was added	107
Wrath of the Lich King	10,930
Cataclysm	11,377

Weblogs added over time

You can see a big spike at the end of WotLK, due to an announcement by Blizzard that the achievement would be taken away. Players rushed to finish an epic achievement and earn the title. Cataclysm came out with the achievement still in place, but with relaxed requirements (no more Shen'dralar rep needed) and so the rate of earning stayed high while players who were almost done finished it up. The big spike at the end of the graph (Jan/Feb 2012) was due to patch 4.3.0 making Darkmoon Faire rep much much easier to obtain.

Realm size vs Insanes

The relationship between active population and insanity.

There's a pretty strong relationship between active realm population and number of insane achievers. There are few outliers, like Ревущий фьорд (Howling Fjord) with 155 out of 15,939 insane (high) or 亞雷戈斯 (Arygos) with 21 out of 21,090 (low). The full data is available in this google doc.

If you're interested in further analysis, you can download the entire MySQL database snapshot. It's a 153 MB .tar.gz file containing a text dump.