I'm worried over the cap increase as well. Epic in 3.5e is horribly, massively broken. As in fighting major deities broken. As in punching out Cthulhu accidentally while sneezing broken. Which, when punched, explodes into a thousand tiny Unicrons, whom the PCs then eat like Skittles while discussing which universe to make barren and lifeless next. That's how broken Epic is.

A straight level increase wouldn't be near as problematic.

Combined with the enhancement redesign, looks like 2012 is a huge year for DDO.