There's a post on healing and death on the Guild Wars 2 Website where ArenaNet designer Jon Peters explains how death and resurrection will work in Guild Wars 2. He explains that defeated players will be downed, but not dead: "Rather than being presented with immediate failure, when a player loses all of their health in Guild Wars 2, they are put into "downed mode." In this mode, the player has a number of downed skills they can use to target enemies and fight for a chance to survive. A downed player can still be attacked, which will send them into a defeated state, leaving them to either wait for an ally to resurrect them or to resurrect at a waypoint." Thanks Guild Wars 2 Slovenija. On related notes, PC Gamer has an article on this, describing plans to scrap healers and tanks, and German site gamona has an English translation of an interview with Eric Falnnum on the subject.