Explore The Grove, The Magnificent Sylvari City Created By The Pale Tree

Written by: Gary Gannon (@garygannon) | July 25, 2012 3:33 pm

25 Comments

Let’s explore the Sylvari city known as The Grove in all its lush magnificent glory. A city that feels almost dreamlike as you wander it’s branches and colorful vistas. The Pale Tree is truly breathtaking.

Explore The Grove, The Magnificent Sylvari City Created By The Pale Tree

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http://www.facebook.com/lee.berg.9 Lee Michael Berg

Love the vid , the place with the banners you were wondering about is for the different Orders; Whisper, Vigil, and Priory. Each main city has an order “hub”.
Odeezee

great video Mike. i hope we are going to get to watch you doing the Finale to the BWE: Hunger Royale, assuming you didn’t get owned. hope you made use of those Day Z skill otherwise we may have to revoke your gamer card.

OT: i really hope that the dances can be synced ala GW1, but it is good to see that they are in the game, even though we were unable to command them using /dance in BWE3.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ivan-Noa/100000016129555 Ivan Noa

great video, I didn’t get much time to play in any of the BWE (work) so this is super. As for FPS issues I hope my poor lil gtx 460 can run this at mid level well.
- Lycronis
  
  You shouldn’t have any problems running it at mid-settings as long as your CPU is a good match for your 460.
- Old Ben
  
  I tested the game on a few systems and found very little difference in frame rate between the lowest and the highest settings, unless there were a lot of players present near water. Reflections seemed to be the only thing that pushed the GPU to a point where the CPU was waiting for it instead of the other way around. In every other situation, the game was (still) CPU-thread bound.
  
  Note that the current game client doesn’t let you pick supersampled anti-aliasing or control anisotropic filtering, so it is possible to push the GPU harder than the game’s “highest” settings by forcing those options in the graphics driver.
  
  Still, if you have a CPU running at 3.2 GHz or more, with 3 or more cores, I’d say you’ll probably be able to play with everything maxed out at 1920×1200 on a GTX 460, although you might want to disable reflections, shadows and high-resolution player textures if you’re going to be doing WvW.
  - Galdros
    
    Ya, you should be fine with that setup.
    
    Unlike me, your video card is worth something, even with a 3.3 GHz CPU I had rather bad settings due to the bad that is the 7450 radeon HD card.
    
    Once I get that 7870 card, those shadows be mine -_-
    - Justin Bania
      
      I hate you all! Me and my GTS 250 and my Athlon dual-core weep at the difference between what I see and what videos show me are actually there. That being said I am still amazed at how smooth it can run on a system as meh as mine…
http://twitter.com/Nin3r Richard Martin

Those banners probably belong to either the Durmand Priory, the Vigil or the Order of Whispers.
http://twitter.com/ron6405 mouse

This city didnt feel like a city if that make any since but compare to other.It felt more like a village in country like Africa or India.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Ivan-Noa/100000016129555 Ivan Noa
  
  yea i get the same feeling
- Jay
  
  Yeah, it was very natural… The ambient sounds helped with that feeling as well.
Jay

I love how massive and detailed the cities are… Gives me reason to explore.
Old Ben

Most of the vistas seem designed by someone who has just learned how to set camera keyframes (or was given a Steadicam for Christmas), and doesn’t know when to stop.

The only place where they seem to have been done by someone with a clue about framing and “visual narration” is Divinity’s Reach (and one or two in Metrica).

Hopefully, most of them are just placeholders, rushed so they were ready for BWE3, and the actual movies will be replaced before launch.

Also, wasps and fireflies in GW2 need blurred or at least partially transparent wings. Those solid wings flapping up and down just look fake.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  I was wondering anyone was going to the level of detail between the different zones in GW2. While Divinity’s Reach provided an amazing amount of details and gives a sense of life. With The Grove, I started noticing the technical game designs instead of a sense of amazement. The broken elevators, the pushed game engine (I noticed city details getting build on screen) and how many of the NPCs seem to be putting down roots, standing around.
  - Old Ben
    
    Mike O’Brien mentioned in the forum that Divinity’s Reach was the city closest to being fully optimized (something I’d already noticed in BWE2). Although that doesn’t mean its vistas are also finished (or that the other ones aren’t), it does mean that they can add more details without killing the frame rate.
    
    I’m not crazy about The Grove. It has some great-looking individual elements but overall it just looked like it would need a lot more vertices and a lot more “clutter” (grass, flowers, things waving in the wind, dripping water, etc.) to be convincing. Some parts of it look like Oblivion gate instances skinned in green instead of red and black.
    
    Hopefully, they just reduced the detail for performance reasons in this BWE and will make it look more organic once the frame rate improves.
Trombu Tonkba Gumbeerbo

fuck you mike B, you know that this game uses waaaay too much CPU, when it should have almost everything except for moves of vertex data to the GPU — on the fucking GPU.
- Old Ben
  
  Actually, the biggest performance improvement came when they moved fucking occlusion checks from the fucking GPU to a separate fucking thread on the fucking CPU.
  - Jado Cast
    
    LOL, I laughed so hard my ribs hurt. XD Stop it your killing me!
- SiderFace
  
  u need corez brah
  
  (so angry)
Revanhavoc

I’m up in the clouds, it’s late at night, and this is exactly what I need.
http://profile.yahoo.com/QC4D5FZSXX3P5WZFF6NQZIG2LM carlos moreno

I think you interrupted an 4some. 3 females 1 guy…..:o
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Can’t decide if any of the GW2 cities will end up with natural socials hubs. Once you level through or explore The Grove, I’m not sure if there is a reason to return.
- Jado Cast
  
  LA is my bet
Charles Rutledge

Sucks that you missed the Dive Goggles. Gives you the ability to do spins and flips as you jump off the high levels into the pool on the bottom floor.
http://www.facebook.com/anthony.perry.357 Anthony Perry

I did find one area here that resembled a prison. a room full of giant Venus fly traps. some were open, the others were closed with sylvari standing inside. very cool, and kinda creepy. I do have a screenshot of it on my Facebook page.

Explore The Grove, The Magnificent Sylvari City Created By The Pale Tree

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