I don't understand how playing WoW automatically makes you a nerd. If it's a small part of your lifestyle then you are not a nerd, people need to start realising this! This is like saying your a professional swimmer when you go for a swim at the gym for an hour every week. You can say they may have a nerdy side but it doesn't mean they are now a nerd. It's 2011, all sorts of different people with different lifestyles play WoW and other games. They aren't all nerds!

Its not that you are a nerd (although I am), its that people will perceive you as a nerd and call you nerd. At least- those people who still consider it an insult.

I'm not a nerd.

Nerds are smart.

I'm gonna have to agree with Barnzey. I play WoW, but I'm pretty sure no one would ever call me a nerd. People who know me and find out I play are shocked, granted, but that doesn't magically reclassify me. And I don't think most of those I play with are nerds. Yeah, I know that one computer programmer and a couple of have-no-life teenagers, but I also know a high-school football star, a trucker, a model (yes the female kind), a singer, an FBI agent, and a grandmother and grandfather who play as well. Most of us haven't played any other computer, console, or handheld game prior to someone bringing us around to WoW.

I understand and play WoW because I've worked at it and the social network of people in it have helped me along, not because I'm a geek who was sitting alone in my basement and jumped right in with my addons in my backpack and my bag of chips in my hand on day one of release. It seems to be a rare game that has managed to provide a little something for everyone. And this is comparatively new to the mainstream, newer than console or handheld games are. So it might be new and different and not understood and not yet accepted, but believe it will be, maybe even more so than other types of gaming, in the future.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't automatically make you a geek or a nerd or a basement-dwelling creep if you play WoW. In my experience, more often it's a social, creative, or competitive outlet for your average, comparatively normal or even remarkably exceptional person.

I had a guildie who was a neurosurgeon. WoW takes all kinds. :)