I can not in Beta but keep up to date pretty much every day on release info on sites I watch.. so, let me tell you what I know regarding your questions.
First is gear. gear isn't PVE or PVP. its across all play styles. Although you can change gear to change bonus' you get from them (out of combat of course) per situational awareness of what you can expect, IE: you can go from sword and shield in heavy armor to staff and light armor if you think you will be better equipped for the fight by wearing that gear.
Combat.. I'd expect a good pace. If you played Neverwinter, its a okay comparison. If you've played any Elder Scrolls game, IE Skyrim, that's a better estimation of how targeting would work. There are no hard locks on targets but "soft" locks to allow for internet lag to not turn it into a twitch shooter type pvp.
The PVP, is FvFvF or Faction v Faction v Faction in Cyrodiil. Cyrodiil is huge. Once again, if you've played Skyrim, imagine the size of that map (we've been told) is to be a good estimation of how large it is. Siege warfare, yep. And when you take a keep, whatever damage you did stays, and you have to repair it. There will be no pvp mini games such as CFT or king of the hill, the pvp starts and stops at Cyrodiil, open world pvp style.
As far as a death penalty, have not heard anything huge, other than having to rez at a "waypoint" if nobody has a charged soul gem to rez you.
Like I said, everything above is from the web, not the game. Anything else specifically you want to know?
