War Room: A history and review

So I posted on the Steam-Powered Gamer facebook page this morning that I will be going on hiatus this week due to a last-minute move between apartments, but something special happened today that I had to break my hiatus for:
Pretty much everyone in the Warmachine/Hordes community should be aware by now that War Room has officially been released!
There's been a lot of drama swirling around the War Room release and the numerous delays.  Well, the wait is over!... sorta.  Let me provide a brief history for those who might not be aware of what has happened leading up to this historic release and my impressions of playing with the application itself for the past few hours.

War Room to replace Vassal?

 I want to call this a rumor but really it's more of some reasonable speculation/wishlisting, but I figured it would be worth sharing regardless.  There has been some conversation amongst some friends about Vassal, which has become a popular... what do I call it... game tool?  Well my buddies and I were thinking that with the recent announcement about the upcoming War Room app, that PP might have been giving us some hints about the potential future of this program.