Thanks! I'm really glad you appreciate those things. This server has taken about 3 years to complete to this point and that is mostly because we are such perfectionists. I really wanted the forests to feel like a forest; because of that, we had to make pretty much every area from scratch, no prefabs lived up to our standards... I also wanted it to be realistic in that you can cut through the non-trodden areas like in real life, though it should be a slow, tedious process.
P.S. If you have the woodland stride feat (druid 2 or ranger 7) you can move through the brush at full speed. Finally rangers and druids can actually make use of that feat =P
Again, I am very happy to hear that you appreciate all the attention to detail, it means it was worth it.