Here's the word from DICE (just given to us a few minutes ago) on the FF/hardcore issue: It was a mistake that they'll address in the next version.
Also, they clarified this as the current situation:
With R9, a server that has:
* Friendly Fire ON
OR
* Killcam OFF + Minimap OFF + crosshair OFF + 3DSpotting OFF + MiniMapSpotting OFF + 3pVehicleCameras OFF
Is considered "hardcore" by the server browser.
Well I am happy to say that with R9 it seems to have solved the main crash issues I was experiencing on my server. As such, my server has been active and full for the past 4days!
Hopefully with R10 and the requirement for punk buster it does not break that trend as I currently still have pb disabled...