Story chapters have varied. For some, there IS no respawn point inside of the instance (or respawning is broken). For most there is no anvil so you eventually would be fighting naked. During the 1st instance of the most recent chapter I died soon before the instance ended and could not respawn, fortunately I was doing it with someone else so had to wait until they were able to revive me. The reason you couldn't respawn could have been due to the fact that you had another person in party. If the whole party wiped they could respawn. I personally never had the issue of respawn being broken but I'll take your word for it. As for the armour anvil, I'm all for adding one to the instances!