The purpose of making certain items unavailable to the public was, as AussieCunt stated, to prevent regular users from purchasing those items. However this was more of a band aid fix because nothing about the item has changed other than your ability to view it's ToriShop page. You can still buy it from the store using special execution URLs.
So really the only thing this change has done is prevented everyone from viewing the items information, and only prevented SOME people from purchasing them.