Minecraft: On the up or down?

Minecraft has been a lot of hype on all of the livestreaming sites and YouTube, and rightly so. It's a game meant to be shared with friends and viewers; it's no fun playing by yourself.
It seems like it's been on the up for awhile, but how much longer will people deal with the monthly updates that require new mod updates, loss of worlds, etc? How much longer till Mojang doesn't have any new ideas to add to MC other than new plants and foods and turns it into some sort of hyper-realistic game?

What are your thoughts?