Today they announced that we would go to level cap 115 early in November. No surprise. What did surprise me was that instead of just getting Mordor (which is large enough to take a few months on) we will be getting everything up through the Northern Strongholds - all of the level 115 content.
If they continue to give all content for a particular level cap every few months (and they could do it faster if they want - we were told new content would come every one to two months as I recall) this means level 120 at the beginning of January, level 130 at the beginning of March and level 140 at the beginning of May.
They already said they would shut down legendary servers when they hit the current level cap if population was small and we are a lot smaller than Treebeard.
Early May is certainly sooner than I expected as recently as this morning before I read the patch notes.
Getting from the Black Gate to Erebor in one to two months is a much bigger chunk than I ever expected.
My guess is that they do not want to shut us down before 140 (for which I applaud them) but do not want a server with such low population lasting any longer than necessary (for which I do not criticize them). I would not be shocked if May was optimistic since they can release new content faster than every two months. One month for the Iron Hills and Gray Mountains would actually be more leisurely than two months for Mordor and Nothern Strongholds.
Anyone that wants to be on one of the old servers but doesn't plan to get to 140 in less than 6 months - here is a great opportunity. You are quite likely to get a free transfer to any NA or European server faster than expected and meanwhile can get the experience point boost for all of your leveling as well as optional difficulty choices. Minimal lag too. One warning - if there is a very good Black Friday or Christmas sale on the higher level Valars we may not be eligible since they probably will not let us buy them until the server has reached the level that the Valars boost us to - 120 or 130 for the best two,