to which the guys in first and second (at the time of this writing) had increased their scores on one game. The other thing I found wild was the next few guys, they looked like they made there more or less honestly.

Here are the links to the top players right now

1. asphYx
2. AvengerXVIII
3. TFS|FeAr
4. yilwen

Here is the first thing that is a slap in the face to any honest player is the best round for the top two. They have some impossible scores there, and most points come from the teamwork stats, if you look closer they are all S.P.M. (Support per minute?). They have very little else, must have found a person/vehicle to keep healing/glitching or something would be my guess.
1st got 21013 point in one round!
2nd got a whopping 16012
The more realistic scores of the 3rd and 4th place players are in the 200 to 300 range.

The next thing that immediately looks strange is the lack of medals and playing time for some players, the top two included. The top player in Battlefield 2 has no medals! And both the top two players have their play time measured in minutes, not hours!
This is too weird, there must be a hack, glitch, or some other explanation, the only good news about these two guys is that since they hardly play you are not likely run in to them in a game.(unlike the 3rd and 4th place players, they seem to eat, sleep, and live Battlefield 2)

On the subject of medals; 2 medals that you would think are hard to get are knife and pistol medals. These certainly are not my weapons of choice, and to get a lot of kills with either of these weapons make me go hmmmm…. Collusion between players on opposite sides maybe? Certainly would be a good way to get points and a awards. Bronze medals ok, I can see if you want medals getting 10 kills in a game with each weapon, if that’s what needed for get that medal, is something that’s achievable without too much trouble, but silver medal? How many kills are required for that? Anyhow it just something that would be rare in my opinion, and is one of those things that makes you go "Hmmmm."

I once was in a server with my clan mates and 2 games in a row some guy came in first with a score in the negative thousands. How did he end up first? Glitch? Who knows. Maybe the server’s score routines don’t take into consideration such a score and somewhere along the way the negative is dropped or something along that line.

With the inaccuracy of the ranking and points it’s too bad that AE uses it to select the command position, otherwise it really would not have any significant impact for me..

I like that ranking and statistics that battle field keeps, but the overall usefulness as a measure of skill compared to the rest of the world is more or less nonexistent. It is fun however to watch your own rand and that of friends and enemies.

I hope that AE wipes the points clean in a future patch and also makes harder to cheat the system. It would be nice if they tightened the ranked servers security up, maybe add an observer mode and make it mandatory that a server be monitored (at least intermittently) in order to qualify for rank status.

The reality is that we will have to wait and see what EA does, but if the 1st patch is any indication we might not like the result.