I think you're seeing a lot of "new" shamans because of class/race expansion, same reason you're seeing a heap of troll druids. Shammies have traditionally been low on the population totem poll, no pun intended.
As much as I love mine (and it's my main), I haven't been playing it as much because elemental is still a very boring DPS rotation and though Resto is effective, I'm finding my priest (now that they "fixed" his mana regen) and pally a little more fun in terms of the variety of button pushing and cooldowns.
But again, anytime someone mentions something like the above, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, so YMMV.
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