The 1995 ‘Generation’ teaching was a change in understanding. But, it changed a linchpin teaching. There were Witnesses who felt this belief was carved in stone. When the religion pulled the rug out from under everybody - the religion was over for a lot of people.
I remember that. My husband was a new jw; and one day in 1994, I said, "they will have to change the 1994 date, a generation is supposed to be 70 to 80 years, starting in 1914 that means that the end has to come then. Then when the article came out in 1995 changing that, he said, "how did you know that?" I said I had seen how many times the WTS has changed a seemingly written in stone teaching, to something else. It was time, 1994 is here.