If you link from A, and are boosting with A, then any accounts directly linked from A will not receive RAF based on that connection.

For example.

A - C
B - D - E


If you are boosting with an 80th on A, then C will not receive RAF. If on the other hand the 80 were on B (in my above example, D would get RAF because D and E are linked and together; but without E online, D is shit out of luck.

In general, you'd want to cascade or chain as much as possible.

If you go:
A
B - C - D - E

As suggested above, when E pays for a month, D gets a month free. Ditto for D and C paying, each giving the previous account in the chain the free month. When E (and C and D) pay for their 2nd month, the account that referred them will each get a single Zhevra mount.

In the above example, you can also cascade granted levels. Let's say you level a toon from 1st to 60th, on account E. For every two levels gained, you can grant one level. So at 3rd you can grant 1, 5th you can grant 2.... at 59th you can grant 29 levels. If in the process of RAF you successfully boost... let's say Druids, Warlocks, Shaman's and a mixted team... that adds up to (29x4=126) 126 levels you can grant.

So we have E giving 126 levels to D, D giving 126 levels to C, and C giving 126 levels to B.

In addition to this, D is gaining 126 levels as granted levels from E. Which means it can in turn grant half of those levels to C, so C gets 126 levels based on characters played 1st to 60th on D, and 63 levels based on D receiving granted levels. B is in the same boat as C in the above, but in addition to the 126 + 63, they get 31 more, from the levels C gained based on what was granted to D from E.

If you had set up your accounts like this:

A
B - C
B - D
B - E

It would have been exactly the same in every regard, except:
- There would not have been cascade granted levels.
- All of the Zhevra's would be on Account B.
- Account B would receive all of the extra month's of wow time.

Personally the free granted levels, via the cascade effect seems to be very nice.

If at some point you were going to create 5 brand new toons and level them all up at once from 1st to 60th, and you wanted the RAF bonus for the group of 5.... and you also wanted to level a group of 4 with RAF bonus, which is being boosted by an 80 on A.... You could set up your RAF like this:

A - C - D
B - E

New toons on B - C - D - E while boosted by A all get RAF, because B and E are similar level and grouped. Similarly C and D are similar level and grouped.

At the same time, when you are running five level 1's, every account is similar level and grouped with a linked account.

However, you would not benefit as much from the cascade level effect.

Still, if you wanted to boost 4 new toons on B-E, from A, as well as run 5 new toons on A-E, this last RAF set up would be the one to go with.