While I don't like this modification.. it's possible they did it because people were misinterpreting the gui space left under the old system were slots that they just didn't "activate" and wanted a better representation of what your inventory was without giving some sort of weird false hope that these "unactivated" inventory spaces would someday become active. I know I saw some people actually post in this forum about how SE was stingy because the space was RIGHT THERE and they were withholding it from us.

No I don't like it. But I can see why it was possibly done.