Why is gear still "unique"?

[Mawlzy]

With every gear set we can obtain from raids or tomestones, all of the items are unique, meaning we can't have more than one copy in our inventory.

This always leads to the same issue - fully gearing up in a set leaves us one ring short.

Is it supposed to be immersive, like this is the only set of this gear in existence? Barring the obvious "a hundred characters standing next to you all have the same thing on" argument, this gets thrown out the window when right before each expansion, the trait of being unique gets removed from the rings.

So what exactly is the harm in allowing people multiple copies of this gear to begin with? Why is it still being done this way?

I suppose you could make "rings" like "earrings" and condense them into one category, but I don't know how popular that would be with people. Thoughts?

This has always bugged me too. If overcoming it is some massive coding problem, switch one of the rings to an ankle bracelet.