To the original poster, I say unto thee: motherfuck D&D 4th edition right in its stupid ear! Ugh. If I wanted to play World of Warcraft, I'd have played World of Warcraft. I tried playing a 4th edition game for a month, with some pretty cool guys that I game regularly with. It sucked balls. It was like playing a video game, just really slow. We found it to be terribly simplistic. The mechanics leave a lot to be desired. If you're tired of D&D 3.5, move on to Pathfinder.
Lately, we've been using the White Wolf system to play games in, usually as mortals, sometimes as angels and demons and what have you.
I've been running a Shadowrun game in a bronze-age setting, but the mechanics are too hard for a lot of the newer players, which is unfortunate.
As for board games, I'm a big fan of Settlers of Catan, Carcassone and Ticket to Ride. I haven't gotten much time in yet, but Last Night on Earth rules pretty hard too. Apparently there's an add-on kit for it where you can play space aliens as well.