This is a question, not a poll.

They are added automatically but when they are added depends. Some are added immediately when the chapter is purchased ahead of time. The remainder is added when the chapter goes live.

As for the part that seems to ponder if it requires a character login to happen or if it happens before then only Zenimax people can answer that. Even then it does not matter since we cannot experience any of it until we are in the game.

Theoretically speaking, you or someone else might be able to test that by buying a chapter while you are already logged in to a character.

I don't think there's any way for players to tell, and it's very unlikely ZOS would answer a question like that.

Why do you want to know? The only time I've heard of things like this being important for players is when some items are randomised or scaled to the level of the character recieving them - so it's important to know when that's determined. But that's not the case for any of the items which come with Chapters, so I'm not sure why it matters when exactly the items are generated.

Why do you even consider this relevant?

Amottica wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Theoretically speaking, you or someone else might be able to test that by buying a chapter while you are already logged in to a character.

That would still be logged in, so there would still be a question.

Perhaps it's just with older games but, for some of the games I'm familiar with it's easier/cheaper to touch player's data when they are not actively using it.

Thus, a purchase from outside of the client might not actually run until a player did something inside the client to request a data update or the player stopped touching their data.

Avariprivateer wrote: »

I am aware, however by observing Cunningham 's Law my probability of getting an acurate answer increases.

I’ll see your Richie and raise you a Fonzie.

All benefits accrue on the Server end to prevent fraud. There is a notification to the client, which can only happen when the client is active, of that event having happened. You can only see the result through the client, so you can’t test the state before that notification takes place.

Others have noted that the allocation of rewards to accounts takes place at different times, depending on which reward it is, and the game assets that display the rewards have to be part of everyone’s client so you can observe other players having them.

These particles are not so small that you alter them merely by observing them.

If I understand right your question is:
When you purchase content outside the game, does the table on the server that tracks your owned collectibles get updated on purchase/activation, or is it only updated when you log in.

As someone else said, only ZOS knows for sure (both methods perfectly possible from a programming perspective). But there are hints in how ZOS handles other things and how the game displays information that suggest to me that it is only updated when you log in.

Crowns seem to be the only exception to this, probably because they are in a different account level table. This table is probably updated upon purchase and says "this account owns x." However it would seem that all knock on consequences of that, such as applying collectibles, only happen when you login and the game updates your access based on reading the account table.

Why I think this:
When account wide achievements were implemented, they could have done it off live by merging all the data themselves, but they didn't, they implemented it as user based unlocks on login. This suggests that, for whatever reason, this is their preferred way of updating server account data.

When you unlock a collectible, whether through purchase or ingame binding/reading etc, the item is marked as new, it remains marked as new if you switch characters without unmarking it/viewing it, but if you log off and back in, this marking is lost. Given that chapter ownership collectibles have the new marking when logging in, it seems likely that they have just been assigned.

Someone above referenced past issues with necro and antiquities unlocks being available by mistake. These unlocks only happened for people who actually logged in at the time, which suggests the permission was assigned on the account table, but the actual granting of content only happened at log in.

None of this is definitive, there are certainly ways to code what the player sees to make it look one way when it actually is done differently on the backend.

I'm a mix of "no idea" and "don't care".