Borderlands Pre-Order Guns Demystified

If you've been wondering what the deal is with the Gearbox Mercenary Weapon Pack that you receive for pre-ordering Borderlands from GameStop, MTV Multiplayer has you covered.
According to Gearbox, each new character you create will have these guns, and there's no limit to who you give them to. So, theoretically, you could create a bunch of starter characters and dole out the weapons to friends that didn't pre-order the game. Or, and I'm just spit-balling here, you could sell them all at the start of the game for a wad of cash (presuming Gearbox didn't have the foresight to set the pre-order guns' value to zero).

Worth noting that the guns are really designed for the early part of the game, so they're not likely to give players much of an edge (apart from leveling a bit faster at the beginning). Personally I think this sort of bonus takes some of the joy from the early-game experience, as finding random and awesome guns is the most compelling part of "Borderlands," but I'm aware that there are people out there that would much rather have the best possible equipment from the start, rather than hope for good loot drops while playing through normally. Those are the same people that run "WoW" raids 30 times over to get magic pants, by the way. I'm just sayin'...