The value of grails.gsp.view.dir is applied differently for different grails environment. I consider this a bug.
If you don't consider it a bug, then you should update the documentation, because it drove me nuts.
Thanks to stackoverflow I managed to resolve the issue:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18927812/grails-gsp-view-dir-works-in-dev-but-not-when-deployed-as-war