No, they just went gold overnight.  They have plans for more features, but my experience is that the software is pretty stable and works well as is.  (The Waloli dresses in my freestuff were a learning project with Marvelous Designer.)

A Personal non-commercial license is $99, at least until February.

You do NOT have to be connected to the internet every time you use it.  You do have to be connected the first time you fire up, and to switch computers you have to purposely move the license.

I'm pretty sure it is not the same company as the previous Virtual Fashion Pro software.  Google-fu says VF was made by Reyes Infogrfica in Madrid; Marvelous Designer is by CLO Virtual Fashion in Korea.

I really love the program, myself. It has me really excited.

Quote - Would your creations out of this be easily converted into conforming clothing using PhilC's obj2cr2?

Yup, sure is:

That's my latest project using MD, a hybrid dress.  I've clothified the skirt after using PhilC's OBJ2CR2 to make the whole thing conforming.  (That's an awesome utility BTW, Phil.)  (Please ignore the little pokethrough at the waistband; that's my fault.  Was still working on materials went I took this screen cap, too, so the colors are just to show some of the material zones I've put in.) 

One caveat there is that MD's meshes are currently put out as Delaunay triangle mesh, which are beautiful for dynamic but not as good as quads for conforming.  I find the results acceptable for my own uses, but some people really hate that.