This is exactly what I have been thinking, as LeonBass said below, 1.3 is really where I began to feel that it wasn't the same Minecraft. Now it's becoming more akin to an Role Playing Game and not the quirky sandbox type it originally was.

In my opinion, 1.3 is when Minecraft wasn't working out for me. They had changed so much from the game and it just didn't really feel much before the update. The most recent update was just a bug fix and a few others were as well. Not all of them, but some. I still like to play Minecraft, but sometimes I just worry about it's future. On the bright side, however, it seems like Jeb is starting to add things in the game that most of us been wanting for a while now. For example, fireworks. It's so great that we finally have those. Using TNT in the air to be fireworks just sucked (in my opinion). So I think we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. Who knows, maybe Notch will come back and with both Notch and Jeb, who knows what the game will become.