Even though the timeline was never set in stone, i think Zelda started with basic connections, Adventure of Link was confirmed to be a sequel to the original and then A Link to the Past was confirmed to be a prequel with Link's Awakening, by general consensus, a sequel. Now what we had here was two seperate series of stories that didn't seem to connect but we know that they did in some fashion.
However, it was when Ocarina of Time was released when things became more obscure, I wasn't a fan of the series back then but I can see how this is when confusion started to kick in. Now we had what was perceived to be another prequel, yet no connections followed and even though the Oracles linked in with Alttp, it still didn't really help a huge deal.
In the end it seemed like Nintendo toyed with the idea of creating a full based legend but they still wanted each game to have a sense of individuality. Of course this worked well in some cases but as time grew the more engaged fans grew tireless, so I think Nintendo "had" to do something and in late 2011 they did. It wasn't overly hard for Nintendo to create such connections - since most games had a foreign feel they could retcon in some sort of links. However, there was some blocks and Nintendo countered that with the hypothesis present in the decline Timeline.
Overall I'm not surprised by this announcement in any way and at the end of the day, I'm glad that Nintendo did go through with creating a full Timeline, despite some of the hate, I feel it's largely good.
