From what I gather, a patch was released for Battlefield which removes the DRM. But is there a native, patched version of the game that I can buy? (non-Steam, of course)

I'd say unless you're willing to buy retail, you're stuck in-between a rock & a hard place. It looks like you buy from Origin, Steam or direct through their site.

i was so excited for that game but not including lan play killed the game for me

I like to ask do you have 23 friends close to you, all of which have a good enough desktop to play Battlefield, and a wide enough room to play it in?

To be fair, it does have 4v4 Squad Rush and Deathmatch.

lol i know what you mean, we had 6 to 7 people in our hall, weekends we had counter strike and cod marathon and a small battlefield full of personal issues would have been a great touch. bad company 2 ran in my laptop on medium very well, not even close to as demanding as bf3

they way i see it now is no lan and i wont buy the game, COD has been doing it since cod waw and others are diving into this drm shit