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Yet they themselves admit that all they've done is change the code over time - and according to the link I pointed out earlier, "There is no reason to believe that this would not be a copyright infringement, particularly if the reimplementer had access to the source code of the original program, even if none of the original source code remains".
The difference is that Aardwolf is creating a second mud completely from scratch - totally independent of the existing mud. Once again, the link I listed states "Although there is no case law on this point, it would seem that the only way to break the chain of infringing works is by some extraordinary act, such as a clean room implementation". What Aardwolf is doing isn't truly "clean room" (because some of the developers of the new mud also worked on the old mud) but it's a much cleaner break than just modifying the existing code until you feel it's no longer recognisable.
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