On what conjured food is, I’ve had 2 prevailing theories in my mind. One is that conjured food is just an illusion that tricks your mind into not feeling hungry, and holds you over until you can get to some real food. The other theory is that conjuring the food actually uses magic to turn energy into matter (similar to how star trek synthesizers seemingly create food out of nothing) and thus the food is real and nutritious, but is unstable can can evaporate over time (Why we see it disappear after logging out.
Now since in game, the conjured food can actually be used to regain health, I take this to mean that the food must have some real calories and nutrition in it. So the second theory makes more sense, an illusion would not be able to heal you or help you regain energy.
The second theory also makes more sense for conjured water, If you go back to classic, when a mage conjures water, you see them drawing blue orbs to their hands, so seemingly they use magic to draw moisture out of the air, and for later variants like conjured mineral water, they use a bit of energy and convert it to mass and create minerals to add to the water drawn out of the air.
A third theory I have, but one I find unlikely is that they just summon the food out of some one else’s pantry. But this wouldn’t explain why it disappears after time (logging out). And seeing as how mages mostly appear to be law abiding citizens, I’m not sure they would condone the mass theft of food from Muggles.
I am no theologian, but I believe “manna” - or as I like to call it, “manana” - is in the bible. And it has a similarly nebulous existence.
I do not know where the food comes from. Is it stolen? Or perhaps the Cooks at Dalaran have a fully stocked pantry and fridge, and Mages just summon stuff from their constantly replenished kitchen?
Or is it some sort of purely magical concoction? Perhaps formed from latent Arcane energies, and formed into nutrition?
I am starting to get this theory about WoW lore… where the Titans are the forces of Order and the Arcane, and perhaps Argus was to be an “Unmaker”. Sort of like a catalyst for change or redesigning things.
In Shadows Rising, it is said Sylvanas has the “power of unmaking” as she shatters the helm. That sparked the thought in my mind. Especially since Xalatath exclaims Argus’s defeat is a victory that few understand.
Within this theory is an assumption that the Arcane can manipulate and re-order matter into new forms at a molecular level.
So, perhaps mages actually create food by re-ordering matter?
In Outland there was a village that survived just off of conjured food for a while. I’ve always been under the impression it is energy turned into food. The only annoying thing is it makes no sense why the Horde and Alliance are hurting for food in that situation.
Probably because created food, even that created by reordering energy into matter, doesn’t have nearly as much nutritional value as natural food.
On a metaphysical level, real food probably has more then just nutritional value, with food comes the transference of Life energies from one being to another.
Now, simple combinations, such as created water, is actually something easy to do with magic, as it’s just combining molecules but the product is probably less stable and would breakdown in the body.
I feel like this is something that was commented on in a sentence or two in one of the novels but I can’t for the life of me recall where.
My gut tells me that while you can survive on conjured food it wouldn’t be nearly as nutritional as the real thing, it’s the bare minimum. But that might be headcanon.
Pretty sure this is correct though I haven’t read deeply into it.
That’s a lot of speculation. But like I said, we have two scenarios that don’t fit when it wasn’t an issue for Kirin’tor Village to live off it. It’d be interesting if they actually delved into it one way or the other.
To expand the topic a bit, don’t forget about Suramar and being under the dome for ten thousand years. There was no farmland (aside from the vineyards) within the city, and it’s highly unlikely the entire population of the city was subsisting on that alone.
In addition, their foods include several kinds of what appear to be specially conjured food. This could either mean that the citizens of Suramar have a uniquely ‘nutritious’ form of creating food from magic, or that conjured or magically made foodstuffs provide some degree of nutritional value.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that most conjured food is so much empty calories. While they will sustain you for a meal or two eating nothing but them will lead to a host of health problems that would cripple a civilization relying on it. However, for most of history in Azeroth there was no need to rely on conjured food long term, due to other food sources, lack of a wide enough mage population, etc to not provide motivation to really delve into a better solution. The exception to this is Suramar, who due to the shield were forced to innovate food solutions and have found ways to infuse more nutritional value into their foods, along with small groves, fisheries, and ample use of time magic to provide sustenance for their population without any dedicated growing fields.
Or… maybe WoW Lore just doesn’t care about food supply or the like except when it’s narratively convenient as a plot issue.
I think mages take energy from Azeroth’s leylines and/or twisting nether and converts it into matter in the form of cookies and cakes. Lore wise, there are very few mages and having dedicated groups do nothing but summon food for their lives isn’t sustainable for the vast majority of the population.
This question comes up pretty often, and I have always tended to fall on the side of Korzuk’s “empty calories” explanation. Conjured food provides metabolic energy, but that’s it.
I have totally not noticed until just about when I was going to post…
I’ll be reading something and get a desire to respond to it and boom… I notice the dates… sometimes I notice that I don’t know the people posting but often… I don’t really think about it because the topic is speaking to me, and I want to contribute…
Blizzards Forum rules foster that notion. You aren’t supposed to bring up old threads… like years old…. unless something relevant actually happened. I don’t know the exact rules, but I think “Necroing” threads is listed with “trolling” as vague transgressions.
Rules aside - unless something new happened, it seems odd to just have the top of the page being discussions from years ago.
Another reason might be that, after 5 years, some of the people might never return to even see the reply. So, depending on the topic, it is like digging up the bones of the dead to scream at them.
I suppose it’s standard Forum etiquette.
I largely agree that necroing isn’t a good thing - old topics without new information are best left in peace. If someone wants to start a similar topic again, I think more than a year is a safe distance as far as avoiding being called a “spam” thread.
5 years is cray cray
However, when these old threads get Necro’d, I do get a bit of wistful nostalgia when I see one of my posts from years ago.
I like that even 5 years ago, I was tying Xalatath to the plot, even as far as food speculation.
I necro threads because I don’t want to make new threads discussing the exact same topic that others have discussed previously. I found this thread by using google, clicked on it, and replied. It’s that simple. I necroed the “Kill off Jaina” thread and people are genuinely giving discussion there. It saves search results and it’s good for the environment by saving storage space, and I’m going to continue to necro threads, and you should too.
To get back on topic however, conjure refreshment table is 3% of base mana, and frostfire bolt is 2% of base mana. We can estimate the mass of the frostfire bolt by its size and the density of ice. For a 1.3 meter long Frostfire bolt, its mass would be maybe 8.18 kilograms. This is equivalent to summoning 12.4 loaves of bread.