It’s no secret that many of us here aboard the Good Ship MOP love us some Bard classes or support classes in general, so when word that Shroud of the Avatar is working on making a Bard class crossed our desk, our ears immediately perked up, even if things for the MMORPG are looking rather shaky.

According to a recent forum post, a rough idea of what a Bard in Shroud of the Avatar would look like is taking shape. Bards would be a dedicated support class with a couple of combat options. They would be able to weave songs with up to two effects, though that could be upgraded to three with specialization. Song effect ideas include increased party movement speed, faster party regeneration, and an AoE damage song that deals mild hurting and high aggro akin to “playing Nickelback songs on an off key accordion.” Readers should bear in mind that a Bard looks like it’s in the purely conceptual stage, so don’t expect this class to arrive anytime soon. Still, it’s perhaps nice for fans to know they can possibly Nickelback their way through a fight.

Catnip Games’ Chris Spears also takes a moment in the post to criticize press coverage of Shroud of the Avatar following the game’s recent corporate sale, missing SEC filings for investors, and botched Kickstarter rewards, as well as the company’s refusal to answer questions on these topics from press.

“That false negative image the game has outside our community is the biggest dragon we have to slay to expand our user base. I’m working on lots of promotion options to get us in front of more users but I’m always open to ideas on ways to promote things and get word out on the game. A story with a title that suggests some project is screwing its users, near collapse, or that there is some nefarious and intentionally treacherous activity going on is always going to get clicks, comments, and attention. It’s sadly just human nature that everyone loves watching a train wreck. I totally get that so our challenge is how to get people excited about a game that has released for 70 months in a row, hasn’t had any significant down time, never lost anyone’s data or done a rollback, never had a dupe, has a freakin’ amazing community, and just keeps on getting a bit better each month. It is a great story but a tough sell to get a website to write about in a positive way. Negative speculation or explosive success? Sure, they’ll print that all day long but month after month moderate success and perseverance, meh, no one will click on that.”

Now, obviously we can’t speak for every journalistic outlet out there, nor for the notoriously caustic SOTA Reddit, but we thought we’d do a little experiment: We’ve looked through all of our own coverage of Shroud of the Avatar since we went indie in 2015, subtracted out all the minor mentions in things like MOP Up, and rounded up just the ones that feature SOTA prominently. You can be your own judge of how much and what kind of attention this rather small MMO has gotten over the last five years.