A lot of people have been asking for it, thousands.

The devs don't want to be locked into a release time frame as far as I can see.

The only problem, well, not -only- problem, but a major problem, is that the longer it takes, the further apart the divide between Old players and New players.
Eventually everyone's going to have multiple rank 50s and the zones will be empty again, because the rank 50s will power level their friends.

They would be smart to open new servers when the PS3 comes out so that players can decide if they want to start in a clean fresh world without hyper inflation and loads of 50s, or if they want to play on existing established servers.