The rumors that have been flying around the message boards seem to have been true. DICE is working on a new patch that will include a new map as well as the fixes/changes/revisions to the game. From the looks of it, they are addressing many of the community concerns with the game at this point. Here is the update from the Battlefield 2 site:
Greetings,
The launch of Battlefield 2: Armored Fury has started off with great success, the maps have been great and the new scout choppers are introducing a whole new style of game play. Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of support and approval from the American community. Playing in Alaska, fields and Operation Road Rage make these maps a great change up in play. If not already, I suggest joining in the fun; it?s available for download at http://downloader.ea.com/products/en_US/bf2armor.
We recognize that this has been a very trying time for everyone who enjoys Battlefield 2 and are putting forth every effort to improve upon the issues that are causing some players frustration. The DICE team has been reviewing player feedback gathered from forums, email, and the ranker server providers in an effort to provide the best possible step forward from 1.3. While this work has been highly focused on bug fixing the team has also managed to put some work towards new content.
Some groups have noticed the testing of a new map ?Road to Jalalabad? being run on our test servers. This map will be included in our next patch release and is not part of a new booster pack. Some of the items on the change list for this next step are:
* Reversion: Allowing unlocks on unranked servers
* Fix/Reversion: We fixed the issue preventing mod teams from running multiple game modes in one map list.
* Tuning: We have lowered the number of players needed to start a ranked game.
* Tuning: We have made some modifications to the vehicle drop feature introduced in 1.3. These changes should reduce the overall impact of “cartillery” on game play.
* Crash Fix: We have located and fixed a crash connected to 1.3.These are only a small portion of the fixes being worked on for our next step. We would also like to announce that we will be holding an Open Beta in early July for this next patch. We will have public servers hosted, Beta files available on mirror sites, and specific threads for feedback during this Beta period hosted on the EA forums.
As always keep your eyes on this space for all the latest Battlefield News.
-The DICE Battlefield Team