Since we're comparing the three of them, why wouldn't you want SMN to play more like Warlock? Admittedly I know next to nothing about either one of them, but both XIV's SMN and WoW's Warlock look a lot more hands-on with their pets than what XI had. In XI all I ever saw was a whole lot of sitting around or being a glorified healer, only bringing your avatars out once a minute or so to cast a Blood Pact before immediately sending them away again. Sounds dull to me. XI's is more like a "traditional" Final Fantasy Summoner and it also seems traditionally boring since it's gameplay that works better in a singleplayer RPG where you have other characters to manage at the same time rather than a more action-oriented MMO where you're only ever in control of yourself.

But this is from the perspective of someone who never actually used their SMN (I collected the base avatars and Fenrir with my MNK just because I could, left my SMN at lvl1) and only played from launch up until mid-WotG so I may be wrong and/or things may have changed since I quit. In fact, I have a vague recollection that someone on the forums explained the changes to me once, but I can't remember.