People forget how many pros there are to joining an existing server: Your friends benefit more from joining you on your 'established' server than you gain from joining them on the 'new' one.

When I started version 1.0 at CE release, we were all new to the server. So a trip back memory lane...

When we were ALL ranks 1-20:
We all walked around in broken weathered gear because it was hard to find a craftsman to fix it/noobness meant we didn't know about repair npc.
Your first equipment upgrade into a hempen doublet would cost you on ave. 500K...which you didn't have. But since so few were made crafters could have a field day.
Level 20+characters were still running around in crap.
If you were trying to craft your own gears, mats were hard to find, because there were very few DOH's leveled high enough to get them. And those that were leveling it were again, charging a premium
EVERYONE was learning the game...so while people did help each other out, we were all Noobs. You couldn't just /l 'hey guys where do I go for quest x or find flax' and get a straight answer.

This isn't even including all the 'I know no one stuff' we dealt with...or the horrible sp system/UI etc.

What New players of 2.0 will get:
Veteran Players who know where stuff is/overfill markets with mats
Veteran Players who will help new ls mates out with gears/quests etc.
Newer players who will craft low level gear out of the low level mats we have in abundance on our markets
Newer players to exp with AND veterans who are ranking the 'new' classes (pretty sure new mage class+dow will come out around 2.0 release)
Veteran Players that can help them kill little NM's, and do quest that are very difficult/require a full party at 35, but can easily be duoed by a rank 35+50.

As others have said, if you really want to be level 1 to see the game from fresh eyes, you can always re-roll. But if keeping your character is important to you, especially if you wish to help your friends, having them join you on an established server is proably the better choice. The amount of vets even on an established server will be fairly small in proportion to the newer peoples...especially as time goes on. The gears and bankroll you have alone are helpful to getting your friends started.