I logged into the server I had been playing on today to see that it was now a 1st person only server. I logged out to choose another server, and when I logged in it immediately displayed the deaths screen. Instead of respawning, I logged back into the previous server I was playing, and I was still alive with all my stuff. So to test it I logged into about 5 other servers. On three of them I was still alive with my gear, and the other two logged directly into death screens.