Hey gang, after my group encouraged me to pick up the wizard, i come to you for guidance wisdom, how would you roleplay a wizard? 

My experience with wizards were "that guy" kind of players normally played as condersending know it alls that have their nose way up high and all around unlikable.

So how would you suggest roleplaying a wizard that isnt mr."i'm smarter than you therefore clearly better than you" or that isnt condersending? 

I want to give the class a shot but the bad memories give it a bad taste in my mouth... along with the druid,but thats for another time.

Wizards are certainly knowledgeable, but there is no need for them to have an ego about it. Why are they pursing the arcane arts? What are their motivations, other than power?

People who have a goal to achieve usually have better things to do than lord over others.

Educators love teaching and sharing their passion for their field, not just their knowledge.

Learners see the strengths in others, even those wildly different from themselves.

Researchers are very specialized and frequently doubt themselves when stepping outside of their narrow focus.

Readers are often shy and introverted. They might know every answer, but are too inhibited to raise their hand unless encouraged.

High level wizards are gods, but at low levels, they're just bookish.

Teach your wizard humility, and they won't be so abrasive. 

I’m playing one right now who I started at 1st level who is 2nd level who is from a primitive area who was wowed by a cantrip as a child because it was the first magic that he’d seen. He left home after he became an adult to study magic because he’s so fascinated with the arcane arts! He loves magic and he uses it to make his life and other people’s lives easier. He's adventuring to find and learn more arcane secrets because he loves magic so much!

Write your wizard’s back story and use that to decide how you play him. 

My wizard is an extreme specialist, he knows a lot about Conjuration, and has learned how to care for a huge variety of animals and creatures, as well as some anatomy and biology. On the other side of Conjuration, he has a basic understanding of a few different planes and how to travel using magic. Outside of those fields, he's aware of just how little he knows. He asks more questions than anyone else at the table, because despite his specialized knowledge base, he's full of curiosity about all the other topics he hasn't studied. He's also 17, and is barely starting out on his first adventure. This is also a heavy exploration/survival campaign, and he can't find his way in the wild to save his life. Literally. The party found him blacked out because he didn't bring enough food for a 3 day journey and couldn't hunt or forage at all. All of these factors help him not come across as arrogant or condescending. 

Like others are saying here, come up with what your wizard does and doesn't know, and stay humble about your weak spots.

Wizards can be whatever you want them to be like with most other classes. 

For example, I played a wizard that was a story teller. Their spell book was a chronicling of the adventures they wanted to tell and would use their spells to help make the stories they wanted to tell. It seems like a bard thing, but thats what made it fun to play as a Wizard

One of my players is playing a wizard that was forced to learn magic to make his power hungery parents happy and now he is very spiteful and has a distaist for reading.

Another example, and the final one I will supply, I have a changeling wizard NPC who found a full spellbook while they were coning someone and is slowly learning to read the spellbook and use the magical notes that are inside of it. He is still a charlatan, but he is slowly learning through his pursuit of magic to be a better person.

while not specifically roleplay suggestions I've got a ton of character concepts for playing all the spell casting classes (with the exception of artificer and beast master ranger because I personally loathe them), link below if you want to have peek, apologies in advance for the formatting.....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JXJ-urOfev_ve44KyIP7BGKjGBH_UJ9u/view?usp=sharing

edit: there are some feats I made for my game in there as well.

I've started a kenku wizard who is usually more confused then condescending. Especially when a party member talks about 2 birds with one stone. When he figures that one out he'll be horrified and will avoid that character all the time. Or change it to 2 dwarfs with one stone 😁

I’m starting a campaign right now in an amazing homebrew world from my fellow DM and I’ll play a Hobgoblin Wizard who decided to go against the martial and vicious culture of his people & even his inner nature in order to become an extreme fanatic pacifist.

He took a perpetual vow of non-violence and his main life goal is to prove that no one should be judged by your origin. Generalizations are not fair, and even a Hobgoblin can spread the messages of love, peace and knowledge. We also have a Human War Cleric Viking-style in the party and the RP between them will be promising!

Mechanically speaking, I'll pretty much focus on battlefield and protection spells, I won’t have a single spell or cantrip capable to cause damage, but I’ll naively contribute to the party with debuffs and disables.

Your wizard could be like Rincewind from Terry Pratchett's Discworld Books. He's definitely not high and mighty.

I have two wizards, one is a high elf who falls under the 'I'm smarter then everyone in the room.. but eventually grew to learn that that isn't always a good thing'.. well mostly *points at signature*

the other is my Adventure League Character a Copper Dragonborn called Alfyred the Cowardly.. who is a wizard and clearly smart but also quite shy and awkward and prefers to stand at the back of combat and run and hide when things go bad... he's only out adventuring because his shop went broke and he needs the money - also um he's trying to impress a pretty dragonborn he met and fell rather hard for (while having no chance whatsoever of winning over).  

The main thing is to look at different ways of being educated.. the only universal thing about wizards is that they treat magic as a science, you could play them as a idiot savant, a awkward professor, a keen recycler (I've always wanted to play a necromancer who's just really really into recycling! ) or someone who learned magic on the streets or under a mentor of some kind. Maybe your wizard went to a magic school and was bottom of the class and knows that they are not the -best- wizard out there and tries to hide that shameful secret from the party?

A friend of mine in the campaign I run on Saturday night is playing her first wizard, Ellie the Forest Gnome. She started out as an overly-friendly motormouth who would always try to use the Barbarian or Druid for cover.

Over the course of the campaign it's been revealed she's only out adventuring because she's looking for his missing grandmother, is a lover of trashy erotica, and cannot say simple words without becoming tongue-tied. 

She decided during the downtime they earned last session she was going to cast Simulacrum. Double Ellies in the adventure should be a lot of fun.

Try to build a wizard with a background other than sage, then act like that background (my example is my wizard 4/fighter 1 the Shadow Warrior; nontypical, 17 Str and 12 Int to begin with, criminal background; plays just like a strong silent sneaky brute with deadly spells to back up his longsword [he's an elf] and in short get rich and kill as many enemies as possible, with mostly his best interest in mind, like a rogue)