While incompetence might be an issue, I think the greater problem is that Microsoft is rolling back control and generally sucks at UX.
Why does this app that's been working just fine as desktop software need to save anything to the cloud by default? It's conceptually odd.
I've used Google docs from the beginning, but I actively choose what docs I want on that platform.
All MS had to do was add "save to cloud" as an additional save option along with "save" and "save as" (maybe renamed as "save to desktop") then auto save could activate where your last save location was. This would be good design.