Considering the game's been announced for a little over two weeks but is set to drop in 2010, we expect news for Final Fantasy XIV to fly fast and furious in the months leading up to its release. Today, for instance, we've received rumors claiming that the beta process for the game will begin as early as September, spawned by a recently uploaded Help Wanted sign on Square Enix's site which requests the aid of game testers and game masters.

The employment offering doesn't actually mention FFXIV, though -- it only asks that applicants be well versed in FFXI, which led some fans to speculate that most of the FFXI support team will be shifted to XIV. The GM positions are scheduled to start mid-September -- a potential start date for the speculated beta. Also lending credence is the fact that the FFXIV dev team claims to have been working on the game for five years, and wants it to have a longer beta period than XI's, which was only four months.

We're smelling a lot of "if" coming off this rumor, but our sister site Massively (which knows more about MMOs than anyone ever) thinks it carries some weight. We'll adhere to its wise, wise judgment.