It's got nothing to do with the map updater. In fact, since the map updater doesn't pass any thing to the launchpad or do anything other than run it exactly as it'd be run via the shortcut, it can't have anything to do with the map updater. What happened is that an SOE update this afternoon broke the launchpad. The first reports I heard were around 3:30pm Pacific time, and I think it was back up by 7pm or so.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/p...opic_id=507643