The extent the bard was imbalanced back then has never been reached again ever since.
Of course, some imbalance still take place, I doubt you could make an MMO fully free of that, but there's no class in game at the moment that could be compared to that old all-mighty bard.
Bard in the current patch is decent and is required in all game activities. In some of those, however, engineer shows itself better. But that's gonna end very soon with 8.1 version and bard will become totally the best of two. So it's a good time to play bard.
To get full 13 and cash shop costs pretty much the same as it always did: ~5-10k EUR for full 13 depending on sales and events for CC, and about 2k for everything else from CS. There are some temporary cash shop boosts nowadays however, which, if you go for the full set, will cost you ~20-25 EUR per month if you won't buy the most expensive class changing item and ~100EUR per month if you will.
And yes, there are lots of full 13 players now.