The first phase is for short term and those changes will appear in Publish 6. They are as follows:

The permadeath system is being removed and changed to a skill revocation system based on deaths.
Deaths will decay from the death counter after one week.
Deaths after a buffer (3 to 5 depending on advancement) will have a skill revocation penalty.
Skill revocation will be slight at first, but will increase in penalty as the player accumulates more and more non-decayed deaths.
The skill revocation penalty will increase as a player advances up the skill tree.
The skill to be revoked will be randomly chosen from the last skill earned in each of the 4 skill branches.
No more than one skill will be revoked at a time, though players can get to a state where they lose a skill each time they die.
This is all of the information that is available at this time. As additional developments occur, we will post more information.