It won't hinder performance at all. If anything, it'll improve performance, especially if it's a 2 stroke. See, 2 stroke engines need a lot more back pressure from the exhaust than 4 stroke engines, and you can tune how much exhaust back pressure there is in a certain RPM range of the engine by lengthening or shortening the pipe from the engine to the back pressure source, in this case the stock muffler, and this changes the engine's powerband. If you lengthen the pipe, it'll make the back pressure happen later, which will make the powerband peak at less of an RPM. Here's a gif on how this works in a 2 stroke engine:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2cqkz8h.gif The blue is air, the green is air and fuel mixed together, and the gray is exhaust. As you can see, some air and fuel escapes into the exhaust system, and the back pressure provided by either a muffler, or in the case of that gif, an expansion chamber, pushes that air and fuel back into the engine to be burnt.