I think there's generally always been some hackish way around, and the hackish way frequently changes between releases of installation media.

Also, when Windows Update deploys certain things, if you have a system that did this, you may get a full screen thing telling you to set up a microsoft account roughly "for your own good". Even when you bypass that, the start menu and notification area generally are eager to suggest hooking your system up to a microsoft account.

They decided that since Android can so aggressively push Google accounts, they should get the same scheme going, but Microsoft has this pesky pre-always-online history of being an offline capable OS.