I've read a few threads on this forum about guest hibernation support in Windows, but no clear answers as to whether or not it is officially supported, particularly on Windows 8.
I've discovered that it's possible to enable guest hibernation in VMware Workstation by removing the plugin vmsvc\disableGuestHibernation.dll, so that the vmware tools service does not set power information on startup to disable the hibernation feature (ReserveHiberFile = FALSE). This indeed does allow me to enable hibernation (powercfg /h on) such that the hibernate option appears in the start menu. Works for Windows 7 and 8.
However, although Windows properly resumes from hibernation (I can see expected driver output in Windbg, which tells me the OS is back on its feet), the VMWare console does not show the desktop. It's just a black screen. Verified this behavior on Windows 7 x64 SP1 and Windows 8 x86. The only option is to force shtudown the VM (power off).