Hey Rasly,
I can answer some of these.

I believe the bodies do stay, I've been back hours later and they are still laying on the ground.
Giving many changes that have been made, I would say the game is harder then it was in EA
Many abilities and racials have been nerfed
Also I find items and gear are far fewer then that were in EA.
I don't need to reload the game at all to continue playing, after the first 3 days from release, they patched a lot of things to fix it.
Hope that helped =\