The parameter Max Items limits the size of the resultant page. Knowing that it is laborious to read pages with more than 2500 entries it is commonly not what you expected. To avoid useless giant tables and to pare down the data traffic this parameter was introduced.
If you want to create giant tables intentionally, feel free to increase the default value. Nowadays the maximum run-time of the scripts (about 60 s) should no longer thwart your intentions.
Best viewed with any standard conformant XHTML-browser.