It's easy to see why Recruit-a-friend with similar EP would be a bad idea, i.e. persitant world blah blah for the discussion though-

The current progression system isn't a leveling effort based leveling system, it is time based. The friends analogy in WOW allows players to speed up their effort based leveling to max level so they can join thier friends at an appropriate level of play.

Ignoring everything else and just concentrating on the concept of the request, which is providing some way for friends to play together, even if they have very different EP pools -

Conceptually, it simply doesn't fit into the perpetuum game model. With a large playerbase and continual new players, the world will stratify. If it was possible to simply 'jump' past all the new layers, the game would end up in a situation where it was too top heavy. So while the idea sounds innocent enough, and would be a great boon to anyone with access to friends of high EP, the game would be barren at the newb level. Without fresh players working thier way through the EP gain, the end game will become quickly over crowded.

I do however agree with Alex, and I've posted so before, that the starting extensions be increased as the game progresses. I don't feel that giving more EP at the start is a good idea, because it allows too much specialization. In other words, new players shouldn't be able to login and fit a termis on day 1, which is what would happen if the EP pool kept increasing. Provide more extension levels, like more navigation (if not removing it completely), marketing, and mining yeilds.

I like night and blood elf chicks as much as the next guy, but what's WoW have to do with Perp?