17 unique armor sets every other patch for so many races + gender combinations is way way way too much work, the only way relic armor can happen is if we sacrifice all the new skins we get from raids, dungeons maybe even tomestones. One single relic armor upgrade for them would take a much effort to design as all the unique sets across all the three 24 man releases (i mean seriously, a raid has maybe 5 or less unique designs reskinned across jobs * 3 raids, still doesn't match the 17 unique armors from a single relic armor upgrade).

Not even wishful thinking, not even if they had more budget, relic armor can't happen, the rest of the game would suffer too much for it. Besides, who has the armory space for so many sets?